In article <BYAPR21MB13171918C3D2AC0E8D177983D12F0@BYAPR21MB1317.namprd21.prod.outlook.com> you write:
-=-=-=-=-=- UASG has not endorsed emojis as part of mailbox names and I doubt that we ever would. But as mentioned below, some mail systems will take a more liberal approach.
First, I have to say that I am dismayed to see that many in the UASG do not know that mailboxes and domain names are different and always have been. This is an important difference, and it's discussed at some length in UASG 012. This would probably be a good time for everyone who hasn't read that document to read it now, so at least we agree on the underlying facts. As several people have pointed out, there are practically no rules for what characters are technically legal in mailbox names, but that doesn't mean that in practice you can put any junk in an address and expect it to work. For example, this is a valid address: "); @,?~]"@m.jl.ly but that doesn't mean I would hand it out as an address to anyone from whom I wanted mail. Similarly, you can technically put random combinations of Hindi, Arabic, Japanese, and emojis in a mailbox, but I wouldn't expect many mail systems to deliver it and if they do deliver it I would expect all sorts of warnings. One of the glaring holes in the EAI documents is that there is no practical advice on choosing mailbox names. We have developed conventions for ASCII names that LDH are fine, dots and plus signs and maybe apostrophes are OK, upper and lower case ASCII are generally interchagable, and beyond that you take your chances. We need appropriate guidance for mailbox names. Before anyone suggests it, the rule for mailboxes can NOT be the same as for IDNs, since a dot is not a separator, mailboxes have always allowed characters not allowed in hostnames, and mail systems have always done fuzzy matching to allow misspellings that wouldn't be possible in domain names. The IETF's PRECIS working group has advice on identifiers that would be a good place to continue from. I don't know if the IETF has the energy to do that, or if people here could usefully contribute. R's, John