"International" email addresses

Dear i18n people,

XForms 1.1 has a regexp that is intended to help people inputting an email  
address by warning them if it is syntactically incorrect.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms/#dt-email

We want to update it, and in particular include "international" email  
addresses. (Can't we replace "internationalization" with  
"deparochialization"?)

The XForms regexp is based on RFC 2822 "Internet Message Format",  
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2822.txt, the latest version of which  
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322, still only defines ascii addresses.

"Internationalized Email Headers" http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6532  
updates rfc5322, apparently by adding all non-ascii UTF8 characters to the  
set allowed to be used in an email "atom"  
(http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6532#section-3.2,  
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.2.3)

So as far as I can see, an internationalised email address is:

  address: atom-list "@" atom-list.
  atom-list: atom ( "." atom )*
  atom: C+
  C: any character in the world EXCEPT (),.:;<>@[\]

a) Do you agree?
b) It was really hard to find this out. The internet is rife with people  
asking and getting bad answers. Please help the internet by being  
definitive.

Thanks.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton
For the Forms WG

Received on Wednesday, 19 November 2014 10:00:46 UTC