50 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
50 lines
2.1 KiB
Plaintext
MBOX-Line: From MRC at CAC.Washington.EDU Tue Oct 9 16:52:35 2007
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To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
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From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
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Date: Fri Jun 8 12:34:40 2018
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Subject: [Imap-protocol] Modified UTF-7: justice delayed, but justice
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served... ; -)
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Message-ID: <alpine.WNT.0.9999.0710091611520.6020@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washignton.EDU>
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I just spent the past several hours implementing support routines for
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Modified UTF-7, with the intention that Alpine will support multinational
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IMAP mailbox names.
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I always knew that the design of Modified UTF-7 sucked. It was certainly
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well-intentioned. Punycode would have saved the day, but it didn't appear
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until years later.
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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Not until today have I fully comprehended the sheer implementation
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insanity and hideous design of Modified UTF-7. I shudder to think of all
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the people who have beaten their heads against a wall in implementing
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Modified UTF-7.
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To those of you with dents in your wall: I'm sorry. As ot today, there's
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a head-shaped dent my wall too. You've been avenged... ;-)
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This has been a learning experience for me. I feel that we need to push
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ahead on UTF-8 mailbox names sooner rather than later. I feel that it is
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far more important for the i18n document to make UTF-8 mailbox names
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possible than setting the language for error messages or translating
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namespaces. The latter two are really l10n issues and belong in a
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separate IMAP-L10N document.
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More specifically, I would move Section 3 of imap-i18n to a new imap-l10n,
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and upgrade the former section 5 to be a full mechanism rather than a
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discussion. I suggest that the former section 5.1 of imap-i18n deprecate
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the LOGIN command entirely, and highlight that SASL names are Unicode.
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As I suggest above, I feel that section 5.2 of imap-i18n is highly
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unsatisfactory for today and needs a real mechanism; the now-expired
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draft-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-01.txt was an option although I would prefer a
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simplified mechanism.
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-- Mark --
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http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
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Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
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Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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