[JDEV] request for ideas: RFC822 to JID mapping

[Hiroaki Nakamura]

Hi Matthias!

Matthias Wimmer wrote:

(snip)
> Yes ... but do you like to use latin characters in your mail address? I
> don't think so and because Jabber allowes users to register with nearly
> every unicode string as their username they do it (I know of even two
> users at my (German) server that registered with asian characters).
> And even (or just because) you don't use non-ASCII characters in RFC822
> mail there is the problem what to do with mails these users write. What
> will be the sender of these mails after they have been gated to the
> RFC822 world?

As for latin mail address, I don't like them nor hate them.  I can live with
them as far as I can have Japanese display names.  Most mailers' address
book can have both display name and mail address for one entry and you can
search an address by which one.

As for mail body, we in Japan use iso-2022-jp encoded plain text, or MIME
encoded HTML text. We don't use 8 bit characters because old mail transfer
agents were not 8-bit clean and chops the most significant bits.

(snip)
> One example, think of the user 崰渰뤰퐰ﰰ줰朰@amessage.de he could be
> translated to the RFC822 address jabber@崰渰뤰퐰ﰰ줰朰.amessage.de and
> with the current DUDE coding this would be
> jabber at dq--vsvpvd7hypuivf4q.amessage.de on the wire.
(snip)
> (Note: to see the above example your mail reader has to support UTF8.)

My mail reader supports UTF-8 and I use "Lucida Sans Unicode" font,
still I can't see above example. Characters are displayed as white boxes
with black borders. Sad, but it's the way it is.

> Any comments about this?

Well, maybe I am too conservative, but I think we should use only latin
characters for IDs (e.g. mail address). Non-latin characters are ok in
attributes (e.g. display names or mail body).  Even when every software
becomes Unicode aware and everyone has Unicode fonts, I think this rule
should not be changed.  For people all around the world, the least common
denominator of characters is latin.  They may not recognize nor distinct
Japanese names.  So I think we should stick to latin IDs. It is OK to use
non-latin IDs if all users of that application are from the same country.

As for Jabber, I am happy with latin JIDs as far as I can have non-latin
nicknames.

This is my opinion. Now I would like to listen to other people's opnions.
--
)Hiroaki Nakamura) hnakamur at v003.vaio.ne.jp