[UA-discuss] [UA-EAI] WhatWG issue regarding <input type="email"> is open (#4562)

[Arnt Gulbrandsen]

On Wednesday 10 June 2020 05:05:00 CEST, Andre Schappo wrote:
>
> Yes, you are right, it is the same problem except that with 
> Unicode it is hugely more complicated.

I've written several EAI implementations and worked on several sites that 
include signup pages, and... I haven't noticed any relevant complexity. 
There's much irrelevant complexity, but in my experience, no relevant 
complexity.

> One could, for instance, state
>
> ① A well formed EA consists of ascii characters but not any ascii characters
> ② A well formed EAI consists of unicode characters but not any 
> unicode characters

So one could. But why would one?

The systems I've seen or worked on do basically a) check that the entered 
string contains a single @ b) check that the part after @ is a domain that 
exists today c) send a verification mail. I know systems that leave out 
some of these steps, or that try to detect typos like gamil. But none 
needed to care about unicode's complexity.

You're bikeshedding, dragging in irrelevant complexity, inventing problems.

> I doubt there is any email system that would allow me to 
> register an EA with a space in the mailbox name eg "andre 
> schappo at wherever.com"

One I've worked on definitely would allow that, I checked just now. It 
might be unable to send you your verification email, but "our" system 
simply accepted the user's input and tried to send email.

This isn't unusual, and it's often intentional. The CEO of that company 
would probably say something like "what matters is whether customers pay, 
not whether we have their email addresses".

Arnt