[UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

Tue Dec 20 14:24:51 UTC 2016

Excellent. That captures that I believe are the top-level considerations.

What about guidance concerning special formatting characters such as directionality and non-width spaces? I would posit that email address should only be valid characters but even that includes some “invisible” characters such as zero-width non-joining. (Apologies if this is covered in the script guidelines but that’s a lot of information – a summary document of a general set of rules – like what Mark has below – plus specific script rules would be a great addition.)

What is the thinking concerning Emoji in email addresses? They are valid Unicode characters but don’t relate back to a specific language. (Again, apologies if this has already been covered in a document of which I’m not aware.)

-Stuart

From: Mark Svancarek
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2016 1:27 PM
To: Tan Tanaka, Dennis <dtantanaka at verisign.com>; Stuart Stuple <stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com>; Ajay DATA <ajay at data.in>; ua-eai at icann.org; don.hollander at icann.org
Subject: RE: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

I propose the following good practices to add to the document:

For Email Service Providers

  *   Don’t enforce case-sensitivity of local-part mailbox names.
     *   Allow the user to enter the email address in any combination of upper-and-lowercase characters so long as the script is correct.
  *   Don’t issue mailbox names which will duplicate other mailbox names which have the same characters but different cases (e.g. “user at example.TLD<mailto:user at example.TLD%20and%20'uSer at example.tld>”)  and “uSer at example.tld<mailto:user at example.TLD%20and%20'uSer at example.tld>”).
  *   Consider offering an all-ASCII mailbox name to the user when they are issued an EAI-compatible mailbox name.
     *   If both names alias to the same mailbox (i.e. can be used interchangeably), users will find it easier to initially share addresses with other users who use a different script.
     *   Once the ASCII address is initially shared, a user can decide whether to also add the UEAI-compatible address to their address book.
  *   Consider offering mailbox names which conform to the domain name label generation rules for the selected script.
     *   Such names are guaranteed to be compatible with the Punycode algorithm.
     *   These email addresses can easily be shared by users with their friends and colleagues who do not use their same writing method; the colleague or friend can address email to such an address, or create an address book entry, using the A-label format.
     *   Upon use, the client MUA software should convert the A-Label to the appropriate U-Label, at which point the friend or colleague will possess the EAI formatted email address despite not having a keyboard or IME which supports the target script.

From: Mark Svancarek
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 12:10 PM
To: 'Tan Tanaka, Dennis' <dtantanaka at verisign.com<mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com>>; Stuart Stuple <stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com<mailto:stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com>>; Ajay DATA <ajay at data.in<mailto:ajay at data.in>>; ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>; don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>
Subject: RE: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

Scenario:

  *   You give me your business card.  It has an asci email address and an EAI address
  *   I don’t know your script, so I mail to your asci address.  Now your asci address is in my address book.
  *   You reply to the mail with EAI address on the CC line.  Now I have both your addresses in the address book.

I guess this is OK.

Stuart, regarding label generation rules, see IDNA2008 for the overview.
file:///C:/Users/marksv/Downloads/UA006%20-%20Relevant%20RFCs[1]%20(1).pdf<file:///C:/Users/marksv/Downloads/UA006%20-%20Relevant%20RFCs%5b1%5d%20(1).pdf>

The various specific rules are script-dependent, e.g.:
http://www.domainpulse.com/2015/08/25/icann-arabic-script-root-zone%E2%80%AC-label-generation/

Pretty detailed stuff, but registries and registrars are obliged to understand it – not unreasonable for an email service provider to understand as well IMO.

From: Tan Tanaka, Dennis [mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 8:14 AM
To: Stuart Stuple <stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com<mailto:stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com>>; Ajay DATA <ajay at data.in<mailto:ajay at data.in>>; Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com<mailto:marksv at microsoft.com>>; ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>; don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

+1 Aliasing back to a ASCII email (rather than a punycode variant) is the more logical scenario

From: Stuart Stuple <stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com<mailto:stuartst at exchange.microsoft.com>>
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 9:51 AM
To: Ajay DATA <ajay at data.in<mailto:ajay at data.in>>, Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com<mailto:marksv at microsoft.com>>, "ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>" <ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>>, Don Hollander <don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>>, Dennis Tan Tanaka <dtantanaka at verisign.com<mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com>>
Cc: "ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>" <ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] RE: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

Aliasing back to a ASCII email (rather than a punycode variant) is the more logical scenario for large providers where the email account is not only used for the mail protocol but also authentication. While I believe that full EAI support for authentication is a goal, it should be a longer-term goal than EAI mail transport.

Mentioned below is “name label generation rules for the selected script.” Are these formalized and, if so, may I have a link to better understand the constraints being imposed?

-Stuart

From: ua-eai-bounces at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai-bounces at icann.org> [mailto:ua-eai-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Ajay DATA
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 7:34 PM
To: Mark Svancarek <marksv at microsoft.com<mailto:marksv at microsoft.com>>; ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>; don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>; dtantanaka at verisign.com<mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com>
Cc: ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

Hello Mark / Don

We have addressed this issue in a different way .

While a user is getting an email account on IDN domain, he is also given an Alias email ID on english , which is attached to his IDN Email (EAI) address. This english email address can be used to even login into webmail and if any email sent to that email, it automatically lands into EAI mailbox. This was required for the basic reason as lots of clients/websites still do not support EAI and even can't be used to signup in facebook or twitter. So now user can give his alias on facebook and still use his EAI mailbox without using any other email account. This even allows user to have multiple aliases.

For example my EAI id is. अजय@डाटा.भारत<mailto:अजय@डाटा.भारत> and alias is ajay at xgenplus.com<mailto:ajay at xgenplus.com> , you can send email to any of the ID, email reaches to same mailbox retaining headers.

Happy to share more info if required.

Best regards

Ajay
On December 14, 2016 7:22:53 AM GMT+05:30, Mark Svancarek via UA-EAI <ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>> wrote:
Pardon me for my very, very late feedback.

  *   Overall, it looks great.
  *   I still have mixed feelings about advising to transmit the domain name portion as A-label.

     *   I guess I’d feel better if we suggested transmitting domain name as A-label *if* the mailbox isn’t a U-Label.

  *   Here’s something I thought about last week at IGF, but didn’t have time to discuss.  I think we should add a section for email service provers to consider (following the section for developers to consider):

     *   Only offer mailbox names which conform to the domain name label generation rules for the selected script.  Such names are guaranteed to be compatible with the Punycode algorithm.
     *   These email addresses can easily be shared by users with their friends and colleagues who do not use their same writing method; the colleague or friend can address email to such an address, or create an address book entry, using the A-label format.
     *   Upon use, the client MUA software should convert the A-Label to the appropriate U-Label, at which point the friend or colleague will possess the EAI formatted email address despite not having a keyboard or IME which supports the target script.

/marksv

From: ua-eai-bounces at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai-bounces at icann.org> [mailto:ua-eai-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Don Hollander
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 3:27 PM
To: dtantanaka at verisign.com<mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com>
Cc: ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [UA-EAI] [Ext] Quick Guide to EAI

Thanks Dennis.

Sometimes its easier to see stuff when it’s in its final form.

Looking forward to other comments.

Don

On 14/12/2016, at 10:39 AM, Tan Tanaka, Dennis <dtantanaka at verisign.com<mailto:dtantanaka at verisign.com>> wrote:

Don,

Some comments:

1.       In the example, under “username” it is suggested that “punycode” (i.e. xn--abc123) is acceptable. IMO, this is wrong. I’m almost sure the protocol doesn’t require this.
2.       Same thing for second-level and top-level domains. We should not encourage software to display the A-label to end users. A-label is for the wire. Users should see only the U-label. After all , UA is about processing and displaying domain names in a proper manner.
3.       EAI is about Unicode, so not sure why the “ASCII or Unicode” bullet points. This can be interpreted that ASCII-only email addresses are EAI too.
4.       Since we are mentioning the idea of an authoritative list of TLDs, we should point the reader where to find one.

My two quick cents,
Dennis

From: <ua-eai-bounces at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai-bounces at icann.org>> on behalf of Don Hollander <don.hollander at icann.org<mailto:don.hollander at icann.org>>
Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 3:48 PM
To: "ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>" <ua-eai at icann.org<mailto:ua-eai at icann.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [UA-EAI] Quick Guide to EAI

Dear all:

Here’s the finished (I hope) product – Quick Guide to EAI.

Can you please review and provide comments (including endorsement) by the end of this week?

Thanks.

Don

Don Hollander
Universal Acceptance Steering Group
Skype: don_hollander

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