Hi,
I didn’t want to reply to this, it’s too depressing. Some ask “what’ the point? Who uses this?” Some ask “how can I test?”
The latter is depressingly hard, but should become easier when all of the top five open source mail servers support it. Most client authors appear to have one or more of those in their existing test setup.
I hope that reduces the effort needed to test such that more developers judge the value to be worth the effort.
I don’t think this explainer even should answer the former… however, when I am asked that question, I usually answer something along the lines of “people are better at using spelling their coworkers’ names
than at transliterating the names reliably to Latin, and anyway, why should they do that in the first place? Shouldn’t we rather adapt computers to users than force humans to conform to computers? Life would also be simpler in many ways if everyone spoke English
but I’m not going to work towards that, I like it when people make their own choices and computers serve people.”
Arnt
From:
Seda Akbulut <seda.akbulut@icann.org>
Date: Friday, 7 February 2025 at 11:20
To: "Mark W. Datysgeld" <mark@governanceprimer.com>, Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt.gulbrandsen@icann.org>, Arnt Gulbrandsen via UA-EAI <ua-eai@icann.org>, "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] Re: [Ext] Re: Dovecot 2.4 released today
Hello all,
Just wanted to bring Mark’s email on top of your email box as we are finalizing the video. Last call for your feedback to the questions Mark raised below.
With thanks for all feedback!
Seda
From:
"Mark W. Datysgeld via UA-EAI" <ua-eai@icann.org>
Reply to: "Mark W. Datysgeld" <mark@governanceprimer.com>
Date: 29 January 2025 Wednesday at 00:06
To: Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt.gulbrandsen@icann.org>, Arnt Gulbrandsen via UA-EAI <ua-eai@icann.org>, "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>, "ua-eai@icann.org" <ua-eai@icann.org>
Subject: [UA-EAI] Re: [Ext] Re: Dovecot 2.4 released today
I am currently finishing the EAI-focusee Explainer Video for this UA Day and beyond (the technical class has already been finalized and delivered to leadership).
In case the EAI community feels that any of the data that can be generalized from this thread (and adjacent data) needs to be in that video, I just need to have it formatted in a way that works for a more general audience.
e.g..: what are the specific repeating questions that stop the clients from being certified Gold.
Let me know.
On January 28, 2025 7:16:50 PM UTC, Arnt Gulbrandsen via UA-EAI <ua-eai@icann.org> wrote:
Hi,
I may be confused, by which I mean that I definitely am confused by hope I’m not TOO confused about this particular part of the world.
The LOGIN command allows only ASCII usernames and passwords, but various forms of AUTHENTICATE allow anything and everything, independent of UTF8=ACCEPT. I like AUTHENTICATE much better than LOGIN and see
Oauth and/or Passkey as the way forward for UA. (I have opinions about which is best, but in truth I’ll be happy if there’s traction on either. Anything good enough is good enough.)
Arnt
From:
"John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
Date: Tuesday, 28 January 2025 at 18:23
To: Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt.gulbrandsen@icann.org>, Dr Ajay Data <ajay@data.in>, "ua-eai@icann.org" <ua-eai@icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] Re: [Ext] Re: Dovecot 2.4 released today
On Tue, 28 Jan 2025, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
Dovecot allows practically everything even if you don’t enable UTF8=ACCEPT. From memory there are only two differences:
1. Dovecot won’t allow a well-behaved MTA such as Exim or Postfix to deliver mail with SMTPUTF8. Postfix has an option to override that, I’m sure there are other ways as well. I doubt that many people enable this option, or one of the
other ways.
2. If a message arrives From: blå@xn--gr-zia.org, such as you might see if the message is from Exchange, then you may see xn- -gr-zia in the user interface of a mail reader, and a search for grå may or may not find the message. If UTF8=ACCEPT
is enabled you should only ever see grå and searching should work reliably.
That sounds right. But the bit about ASCII usernames and passwords is
also true. I looked at the code which is quite simple.
Dovecot’s handling of unexpected Unicode is so liberal that some clients protest
😉
Date: Monday, 27 January 2025 at 18:18
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] Re: [Ext] Re: Dovecot 2.4 released today
On Mon, 27 Jan 2025, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
Sorry, I assumed that John’s question was about IMAP clients. I agree that there are more UA-ready mail clients in general, even if I’m a little surprised by that list. Last time I tested the ios app (Apple’s, I assume) it was unable to
reply correctly, and since I’m typing this into Outlook, let’s test… nope, can’t add a Unicode address to this message, see screenshot. The previous version could do it, and OWA can too.
When I was testing EAI software a while ago, I found almost no IMAP
clients or servers that had the EAI extensions, but it hardly mattered
since they handled EAI messages and UTF-8 folder names using the regular
non-EAI methods. Dovecot, at least up to 2.3, only allows ASCII user
names and passwords (I looked at the code.) In 2.4 it should allow them
if your client turns on the extension. Any idea if it does even if you
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Mark W. Datysgeld from Governance Primer