Subject: [EAI] Protocol Action: 'Simplified POP/IMAP Downgrading for Internationalized Email' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-07.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:33:04 -0800

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Simplified POP/IMAP Downgrading for Internationalized Email'
  (draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade-07.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the Email Address Internationalization
Working Group.

The IESG contact persons are Pete Resnick and Barry Leiba.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade/

[Please note: This document is one a set of four interdependent
documents:

draft-ietf-eai-5738bis
draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade
draft-ietf-eai-rfc5721bis
draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade

These documents should be reviewed, evaluated, and understood
together.]

   Technical Summary

      This document specifies a method for IMAP and POP servers to
      serve internationalized messages to conventional clients.  The
      specification is simple, easy to implement and provides only
      rudimentary results.

   Working Group Summary

      No particular process issues of note. The WG had extensive and
      constructive discussions about the role of "downgrading" (e.g.,
      converting a message stored on the server that contains non-ASCII
      header or envelope information) in the transition to an all-i18n
      environment.  Some of those issues and tradeoffs are discussed in
      draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade and
      draft-ietf-eai-simpledowngrade.  In some cases, the best strategy
      may be to "hide" those messages that cannot be delivered without
      change to legacy clients either with or without some attempt at an
      error message.  A complete treatment of those options is
      impossible because the optimal strategies will depend considerably
      on local circumstances.  Consequently the base IMAP and POP3
      documents are no longer dependent on particular downgrading
      choices and that two methods presented are, to a considerable
      extent, just examples.  They are recommended as alternative
      Standards Track documents because they are protocol specifications
      and their sometimes-subtle details have have been carefully worked
      out, even though the WG has no general recommendation to make
      between them (or other strategies).

      While opinions differ in the WG about which downgrading mechanisms
      are likely to see the most use, if any, consensus is strong that
      these four documents represent the correct output.

   Document Quality

      Some development and interoperability testing has occurred and is
      progressing.  There are strong commitments in various countries to
      implement and deploy the EAI (more properly, SMTPUTF8) messages
      and functions specified in RFCs 6530 through 6533.  Those messages
      will be inaccessible to many users without POP3 and IMAP support,
      so these specifications are quite likely to be implemented and
      deployed in a timely fashion.

      Reviewers who made particular contributions prior to IETF Last
      Call are acknowledged in the documents.  See Section 3 for
      additional information.

   Personnel

      Document Shepherd:   John C Klensin
      Responsible Area Director:   Pete Resnick

   RFC Editor Notes:

OLD (Section 1)
   containing internationalized messages, or even attempt to read

NEW
   containing internationalized messages, or even attempts to read

---

OLD (Section 1)
	proper support for [RFC5721] and/or [RFC5738].

NEW: 
	proper support for [I-D.ietf-eai-rfc5721bis] and/or
[I-D.ietf-eai-5738bis].

---

OLD (Section 2)
	encouraged to implement [RFC5738].
NEW
	encouraged to implement [I-D.ietf-eai-rfc5721bis] and/or
	[I-D.ietf-eai-5738bis].

---

OLD (Section 7)

   If the internationalized message uses any sort of signature, the
   synthetic message's signature almost certainly is invalid.  This is a
   necessary limitation of displaying internationalized messages in
   conventional clients, since the client does not support
   internationalized addresses.

NEW

   If the internationalized message uses any sort of signature that
   covers header fields, the synthetic message's signature almost
   certainly is invalid and may be invalid in other cases.  This is a
   necessary limitation of displaying internationalized messages in
   legacy clients, since those clients do not support internationalized
   header fields.  These cases are discussed in somewhat more detail in
   [I-D.ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade].   Even though invalid, these
   signatures SHOULD NOT be removed from the synthetic message,
   preserving as much of the information as possible from the original
   message.

---

OLD (Section 9)

   [RFC5721]  Gellens, R., and C. Newman, "POP3 Support for UTF-8", RFC
              5721, February 2010.
   [RFC5738]  Resnick, P. and C. Newman, "IMAP Support for UTF-8", RFC
              5738, March 2010.

NEW

   [I-D.ietf-eai-rfc5721bis]       Gellens, R., Newman, C., Yao, J., and
                                   K. Fujiwara, "POP3 Support for
                                   UTF-8", draft-ietf-eai-rfc5721bis-08
                                   (work in progress), October 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-eai-5738bis]          Resnick, P., Newman, C., and S. Shen,
                                   "IMAP Support for UTF-8",
                                   draft-ietf-eai-5738bis-09 (work in
                                   progress), August 2012.

   [I-D.ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade]  Fujiwara, K., "Post-delivery
                                     Message Downgrading for
                                     Internationalized Email Messages",
                                     draft-ietf-eai-popimap-downgrade-08
                                     (work in progress), October 2012.