Technical Summary
This specification extends the Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3)
to support un-encoded international characters in user names,
passwords, mail addresses, message headers, and protocol-level
textual error strings.
Working Group Summary
The WG explored a couple of different designs for this
extension. The path chosen (a global switch to UTF-8 only mode)
has the consensus of the WG.
Document Quality
At least one existing implementation of the document exists.
Personnel
Harald Alvestrand is the document shepherd. Alexey Melnikov
is the responsible AD.
RFC Editor Note
In Section 3.2, change the 4th paragraph to read:
OLD:
When applying SASLprep [RFC4013], servers MUST reject UTF-8 user
names or passwords which contain a Unicode character listed in
section 2.3 of SASLprep [RFC4013].
NEW:
When applying SASLprep [RFC4013], servers MUST reject UTF-8 user
names or passwords which contain a Unicode character listed in
section 2.3 of SASLprep [RFC4013].
When applying SASLPrep to the USER argument, to the PASS argument
or to the APOP username argument, a compliant server or client MUST
treat them as a query string (i.e., unassigned Unicode codepoints are
allowed). When applying SASLPrep to the APOP password argument, a
compliant server or client MUST treat them as a stored string (i.e.,
unassigned Unicode codepoints are prohibited).