Subject: [EAI] MAY transmit mailbox names

From: "Jiankang YAO" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 11:50:00 +0800

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave CROCKER" <[email-masked]>
To: "Apps Discuss" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>; "SM" <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2010 2:04 AM
Subject: [EAI] [apps-discuss] (private) draft reviewof: draft-ietf-eai-rfc5336bis-07.txt (v3)
... 
> 
>> An SMTP client that receives the UTF8SMTPbis extension keyword in response
>> to the EHLO command MAY transmit mailbox names within SMTP commands as
>> internationalized strings in UTF-8 form.  It MAY send a UTF-8 header
>> [RFC5335bis] (which may also include mailbox names in UTF-8).  It MAY
>> transmit the domain parts of mailbox names within SMTP commands or the
>> message header as A-labels or U-labels
> 
> { I believe that the use of "MAY" is not correct. This would mean that the 
> receiver needs a means of distinguishing whether the data are UTF-8 or not. This 
> would border on requiring support of a heuristic, but it certainly adds a 
> significant processing overhead and additional software complexity.
> 
> The only alternative is to specify use of a MAIL command <Mail-parameters> 
> option that declares that the message supports internationalized addresses. 
> Given the approach in this specification, I believe the intent is also to have 
> it mean that UTF-8 encoding is supported.
> 
> The core issue here is specifying an option which declares a message to have an 
> EAI context for all of the message.  So the processing context is fully 
> EAI/UTF-8 or it is legacy net-ASCII.  This is considerably simpler to specify 
> and to process, than would be requiring parsing the incoming string and looking 
> for non-ASCII UTF-8.
> 
> Hence: }
> 
>      An SMTP client...U-labels
>      ->
>      An SMTP client that receives the UTF8SMTPbis extension keyword, in response to
> the EHLO command, will transmit <local-part> within SMTP commands as
> internationalized strings in UTF-8 form.  It will send the email header in UTF-8
> [RFC5335bis] (which can also include <mailbox> names in UTF-8.)  It also will
> transmit the domain parts of mailbox names within SMTP commands or the message
> header as A-labels or U-labels
> 

thanks for your kind comments.

here, you suggest to change "MAY transmit " to "will transmit ".

my understanding is that the eai-aware smtp client has two choices when receiving the  UTF8SMTPbis extension keyword:
1. sending the legacy mail
2. sending the utf8smtp mail

if we use "MAYtransmit ", it  indicates that the eai-aware smtp client has two choices when receiving the  UTF8SMTPbis extension keyword:
1. sending the legacy mail
2. sending the utf8smtp mail

if we use "will transmit ", it may indicate that the eai-aware smtp client has only one choice when receiving the  UTF8SMTPbis extension keyword:
1. sending the utf8smtp mail
but the user may still try to send the legacy mail.

is my understanding correct?

Jiankang Yao