[Python-Dev] mUTF-7 support?

[Jesus Cea]

On 10/10/14 01:08, Victor Stinner wrote:
> When you say "IMAP4", do you mean any IMAP4 server? Do you have a list
> of server vendors known to use the encoding mUTF-7?

All of them. IMAP4 protocol **REQUIRES** mUTF-7.

UTF-8 is optional in IMAP4, and even UTF-8 capable servers have to
support clients without that ability.

Check "5.1. Mailbox Naming" in IMAP4 RFC:
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501>.

> Anyway, open an issue ;-)

I would like to gauge interest/resistance to the idea from my fellows first.

> How is mUTF-7 different than UTF-7? (Why yet another encoding while
> standard UTF encodings exist???)

As explained in section "5.1.3. Mailbox International Naming Convention":

"""
The purpose of these modifications is to correct the following
   problems with UTF-7:

      1) UTF-7 uses the "+" character for shifting; this conflicts with
         the common use of "+" in mailbox names, in particular USENET
         newsgroup names.

      2) UTF-7's encoding is BASE64 which uses the "/" character; this
         conflicts with the use of "/" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

      3) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "\"; this conflicts with
         the use of "\" as a popular hierarchy delimiter.

      4) UTF-7 prohibits the unencoded usage of "~"; this conflicts with
         the use of "~" in some servers as a home directory indicator.

      5) UTF-7 permits multiple alternate forms to represent the same
         string; in particular, printable US-ASCII characters can be
         represented in encoded form.
"""

> Requests of new encodings:

I am volunteering and can even do the mercurial PUSH myself :-p. That is
an advantage over some of those new encoding requests :-pp.

But then yes, I realize that this is a specialized tool (even if IMAP4
is probably the most popular mail access protocol in the world), we can
accommodate every use-case and there are tons of mUTF-7 libraries out
there already.

So, I am asking :).

-- 
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