A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
Title : Internationalization of Email Addresses
Author(s) : J. Klensin
Filename : draft-klensin-emailaddr-i18n-00.txt
Pages : 20
Date : 2003-10-6
Internationalization of electronic mail addresses is, if anything,
more important than the already-completed effort for domain names.
In most of the contexts in which they are used, domain names can be
hidden within or as part of various types of references. Email
addresses, by contrast, are crucial: use of names of people or
organizations as, or as part of, the email local part is, for obvious
reasons, a well-established tradition on the network. Preventing
people from spelling their names correctly is, in the long term,
inexcusable. At the same time, email addresses pose a number of
special problems -- they are more difficult than simple domain names
in some respects, but actually easier in others. This document
discusses the issues with internationalization of email addresses,
explains why some obvious approaches are incompatible with the
definitions and use of Internet mail, and proposes a solution that is
likely to serve users and the network well for the long term.
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