Modified UTF-7: justice delayed, but justice served... ; -)

I just spent the past several hours implementing support
routines for 
Modified UTF-7, with the intention that Alpine will support
multinational 
IMAP mailbox names.

I always knew that the design of Modified UTF-7 sucked.  It
was certainly 
well-intentioned.  Punycode would have saved the day, but it
didn't appear 
until years later.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Not until today have I fully comprehended the sheer
implementation 
insanity and hideous design of Modified UTF-7.  I shudder to
think of all 
the people who have beaten their heads against a wall in
implementing 
Modified UTF-7.

To those of you with dents in your wall: I'm sorry.  As ot
today, there's 
a head-shaped dent my wall too.  You've been avenged... 

This has been a learning experience for me.  I feel that we
need to push 
ahead on UTF-8 mailbox names sooner rather than later.  I
feel that it is 
far more important for the i18n document to make UTF-8
mailbox names 
possible than setting the language for error messages or
translating 
namespaces.  The latter two are really l10n issues and
belong in a 
separate IMAP-L10N document.

More specifically, I would move Section 3 of imap-i18n to a
new imap-l10n, 
and upgrade the former section 5 to be a full mechanism
rather than a 
discussion.  I suggest that the former section 5.1 of
imap-i18n deprecate 
the LOGIN command entirely, and highlight that SASL names
are Unicode.

As I suggest above, I feel that section 5.2 of imap-i18n is
highly 
unsatisfactory for today and needs a real mechanism; the
now-expired 
draft-ietf-eai-imap-utf8-01.txt was an option although I
would prefer a 
simplified mechanism.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washingt
on.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or
public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
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