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From: Christian.Huitema@mirsa.inria.fr (Christian Huitema)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway
Subject: RFC-1148/2: what about underlines
Message-ID: <9102281223.AA21191@jerry.inria.fr>
Date: 28 Feb 91 12:30:35 GMT
Lines: 40
Approved: usenet@ICS.UCI.EDU


The current version of RFC-1148 contained a bug. By mistake, it was
recommended to apply the following transformations between RFC-822 strings and
X.400 Printable strings:

map space(RFC)		to space(X.400)
map underline(RFC)	to escape sequence (u)

This has proven to be very inadequate for the following reasons:

* underline is very frequently used in RFC "local parts".

* space is almost never used in native RFC local parts.

* the usage of the escape sequence "(u)" in an X.400 surname is akward, and
puzzles regular X.400 users.

* the usage of spaces in RFC local parts implies the quoting of the local
part. This quoted addresses cannot be supported by some networks (e.g. UUCP).
They tend to confuse some widely deployed user agents like the standard unix
mailer "/bin/mail" and the standard Berkeley 4.[23] mailer.

In order to cope with this problem, a number of local solutions have been
deployed, e.g. development of UUCP specific mappings or local decisions to
deviate from the RFC. This partial solutions are clearly undesirables, as they
tend to jeopardize the global connectivity and introduce non reversible
mappings.

In order to enhance the interconnectivity, I suggest to adopt the following
bug correction:

map underline(RFC)	to space(X.400)
map space(RFC)		to escape sequence (u)

In order to protect existing software, we could perhaps establish a caveat
so that "when the local part is quoted, no mapping of characters should be
performed". But this should clearly come with a strong incentive to not use
the "quoted" expression when this can be avoided.

Christian Huitema