Valdis, VKve> Mark actually *does* have a *very* valid point - on today's internet, if you 1. The goal is to go beyond today's internet. (But then, that is always the goal of a new standard.) 2. Although the primary focus of IETF work is to make standards for global interoperability, there are fine and valid needs for making global conventions to support local interoperability. Permitting local-part to be unicode is one of those. (And, no, I do not believe this requires changing the global parsing rules.) d/ -- Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com> Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com> Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>