Hello Grant,
Friday, June 16, 2000, 7:11:20 AM, you wrote:
GK> Justin S. wrote:
>> I think overall that those types of e-mail addresses should be allowed. It
>> doesn't matter if it doesn't go with RFC822 or whatever, because some
GK> people
>> are different. It comes down to: do you want the business, or do you want
GK> to
>> bitch and moan at the client for having a '.' before the '@'? I'd rather
>> have the business any day!
GK> This may be true, but it is not the point. When people write e-mail
GK> software, they use the RFC's to identify what is acceptable and what is not.
GK> Whether you or anyone else disagrees with the RFC is not relevant because
GK> the point of a standard is so heterogeneous, cross-vendor systems can
GK> interoperate for the benefit of the user. Ignore the standard, destroy
GK> interoperability and the user suffers. One of the great things about RFC822
GK> e-mail is that is works everywhere, on the oldest and the latest systems.
GK> If you don't like the standard, that's fine, propose a new one and get it
GK> approved as a RFC so we can all use it.
I think you missed his point. As a business, if you tell a customer
they can't complete this transaction because their ISP gave them a
non-standard email address, the customer will blame you, not the ISP,
regardless of how "right" you are about the standard. They will see
that their email has worked fine up until now, and that the problem
must be on your end.
Standards are nice, but in this case, it doesn't pay to be rigid about
them. In this case, by accepting the email, we are not destroying
interoperability, we are merely being forgiving about the mistakes of
others. (to the benefit of our customers, as well)
-- Best regards, William mailto:william@userfriendly.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Tue Oct 19 2004 - 23:35:38 EDT