Gotta quick philosophical question here, attached to practical reality.
The email RFC makes it clear that the username should be considered
case sensitive, while the domain part is case insensitive (in other
words, [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] are equivalent, but
technically speaking, [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] are not) --
but it doesn't require it to be case sensitive. In practical terms,
all variations of [EMAIL PROTECTED] are equivalent.
But this leads to a bit of a conundrum for me. To simplify reality, I
coerce all email addresses to lower case -- this is especially useful
for aol.com, where many users wouldn't be consistent on
capitalization if their life depended on it. But technically
speaking, that makes me non-compliant to the RFC, if I were to ever
run into a mail system that IS case sensitive on the user name.
Does anyone know of any systems that actually enforce case
sensitivity on a user name? I don't know of any, and I can't think of
a time when I've run into one in modern times, but before I commit
the heinous sin of deciding that the RFC is out of step with reality,
I thought I'd bring the issue up.
Are there any reasons NOT to consider the entire email address as
case insensitive? The advantages are great, especially in helping
users find themselves in the listing. I really don't want to get into
the issue of trying to decide if I should subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED]
if [EMAIL PROTECTED] is already subscribed.
is there any reason NOT to ignore the RFCs here and go case insensitive?
--
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
and say 'Man, what are you doing here?'"
