Network Working Group H. Alvestrand Internet-Draft F Expires: August 26, 2006 February 22, 2006 Internationalized Email Addresses: Scenarios draft-alvestrand-i18mail-scenarios-00 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 26, 2006. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). Abstract This document describes some scenarios in which one can imagine internationalized email addresses deployed, and tries to draw some conclusions about what's acceptable and what's not for users in those scenarios. Requirements Language The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 1] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. User interface issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.3. Ignored issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2. Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1. Two i18mail users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2. Three i18mail users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.3. i18mail mailing list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.4. One i18mail user sends to one ascii user . . . . . . . . . 5 2.5. An i18mail user sends to one ascii user and one i18mail user . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.6. An i18mail user sends to a mailing list with a mix of users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 9 Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 2] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 1. Introduction With the advent of internationalized email addresses [ref], there is a very real risk that people using Internet email will have problems communicating that they did not have before. This document tries to sketch some of the scenarios, define what "proper" behaviour would be in the situations, and describe how this will constrain solutions to the "internationalized email" problem. Because of the well known phenomenon that short documents get more review, the document tries to be as brief as possible, as long as that does not sacrifice clarity. 1.1. Terminology An "ascii address" is an email address that has only ASCII characters. An "i18mail address" is an email address that has one or more characters that are outside the ASCII alphabet. It may be restricted in other ways, but those restrictions are not relevant here. An "ascii user" has only email addresses that has only ASCII characters, and can generate only recipient addresses that have ASCII characters. An "i18mail user" has one or more i18mail addresses. He may have ascii addresses too; if he has more than one email address, he has some method to choose which address to use on outgoing email. Note that under this definition, it is not possible to tell from the address that an email sender or recipient is an i18mail user. A "message" is sent from one user (sender) to one or more other users (recipients) - the sender and the recipients are identified by email addresses. A "mailing list" is a mechanism whereby an user can cause a message to be sent to multiple recipients by sending to one recipient address, using machinery that is neither under the sender's control nor under the recipients' control. The pronoun "he" is used to indicate a human of indeterminate sex. 1.2. User interface issues In internationalization, one of the thornier issues has always been user interfaces. In particular in this context, the ability to manipulate text strings (email addresses, in this case) in a script Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 3] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 that the user does not have familiarity with is an issue. A main purpose of i18mail is to allow users to avoid doing so when corresponding with users in their own language locale when that locale normally does not use ASCII - but unless we accept an Internet email community of many small fragments, the introduction of "local" characters into email addresses will cause users to be exposed to addresses that they have trouble recognizing, are unable to enter, and in fact may be unable to display; in some cases, even storing the addresses is an issue. For instance, handling of right-to-left scripts like Arabic in environments used to left-to-right scripts like Thai can be a serious challenge. In order to keep this document short, the following capabilities are assumed: o An i18mail user is able to enter and display directly all characters of interest to him in his language locale. o An i18mail user is able to display all valid characters for i18mail addresses, store them in an address book, and use "reply" without damaging the address. o If the i18mail solution requires keeping extra information around for an address in some cases, the i18mail user is capable of manipulating that information, including storing that information in his address book One can imagine special circumstances where some of these do not represent an optimal solution (for instance, a Thai user may prefer to handle the ASCII address of an Arabic correspondent rather than his Arabic one), but this is an added complication, and is ignored for the moment. 1.3. Ignored issues All the scenarios assume that all parties desire to communicate, that spam filters do not eat messages randomly, and that the mail service behaves according to specification. These are not tenable assumptions in the real world, but considering them would make this document much longer. 2. Scenarios In the scenario descriptions below, A, B and C are i18mail users. X Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 4] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 (and Y and Z if they need to occur) are ascii users. L is an i18n- aware mailing list; LA (not used yet) is a non-i18n-aware mailing list. Apart from the messages being exchanged, and A knowing the addresses of the ones he sends mail to, which are presumed to be made known to A through some other method (business cards, web pages, mail from other users and directories are some examples), there is no communication required between the users. 2.1. Two i18mail users One i18mail user (A) sends a message to another i18mail user (B), and desires to use his i18mail address. The recipient replies to the message. Requirement: The message must arrive at the recipient. The reply must arrive at the sender. The email addresses visible to the sender and recipient must be the i18mail addresses. 2.2. Three i18mail users As above, but A sends his message to both B and C. Both reply to all the recipients listed in the message. Requirement: As above - B and C must get the message, A and C must get the reply from B, A and B must get the reply from C. The email addresses visible to A, B and C must all be the i18mail addresses. 2.3. i18mail mailing list A sends his message to L, a mailing list, which has subscribers B and C. Both reply to the mailing list. The mailing list is i18n aware. Requirement: As above - all messages arrive, with i18mail addresses preserved for all 3 users. 2.4. One i18mail user sends to one ascii user A, an i18mail user, sends to X, an ascii user. X replies. In this scenario, it is a given that A, the sender, has to have some facility for handling ASCII; he has to at least be able to display and enter an ASCII address. Precondition: A has to have an ascii address. Requirement: There must be an algorithmic series of steps that A can Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 5] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 follow in order to get a message to X, and where X's reply gets back to A. There is no requirement that X sees the i18mail address of A, or that the address of A that X sees be one that A knows about beforehand; the requirement is that the messages get there. This non-requirement applies to all the following cases too. Examples of ways this could happen: o Magic happens in the network: A's message gets converted in the network to a format acceptable to X. This may require A to include extra information with the message to help the conversion process - and may be impossible to do for the general case. o Sender selection: A's i18mail message gets bounced in the network, and the reception of the error report causes A to resend the message using a format acceptable to X. o Conversion at destination) A's message gets accepted, and X has facilities available to convert it into an acceptable form for X, including deriving a valid ASCII address for A. This would require knowledge of i18n at X's site, but not necessarily in X's user agent. This is NOT an exhaustive list, and is NOT part of the requirements of the scenarios. A given protocol for i18mail will in turn impose new requirements on the scenarios - for instance, if extra information is included with the message, a user interface may need to exist to allow the sender to manipulate this information. 2.5. An i18mail user sends to one ascii user and one i18mail user In this scenario, A sends to B and X; both reply. Precondition: A and B have to have valid ASCII addresses. Requirement: Through some series of steps, A must be able to get a message to both B and X; through some series of steps, B and X must be able to reply to each other and to A. X must not require information outside of what is included in the message to get a message to B. Possible non-requirements (for discussion): o Maybe the messages to B and X don't need to be exactly the same. Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 6] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 o Maybe B doesn't need to see or use A's i18mail address when he's replying to A and X. o Maybe X doesn't need to see A's address exactly the same on the message from A and the reply from B. 2.6. An i18mail user sends to a mailing list with a mix of users In this scenario, A sends to L, and L has B and X as subscribers. B and X reply. Requirement: Messages get there. A will not have to know anything about X in order to make the messages go through. Notes and non-requirements: o It may be acceptable for A to have to treat L as if L was an ASCII mailing list (LA) o It may be acceptable for B to see A's ASCII address, not his i18mail address o How one can transition between this and the scenario ofSection 2.3 is unclear. 3. IANA Considerations This document makes no request of IANA. Note to RFC Editor: this section may be removed on publication as an RFC. 4. Security Considerations Security issues are deliberately overlooked in order to reduce the size of the document. 5. Acknowledgements 6. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 7] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 Author's Address Harald Tveit Alvestrand F Alvestrand Expires August 26, 2006 [Page 8] Internet-Draft I18Mail Scenarios February 2006 Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. 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