Re: user-mail-address

[Karl Kleinpaste <karl@jprc.com>]

Jason R Mastaler <jason@mastaler.com> writes:
>> Is there a way to make this more flexible? 

Rich Pieri <rich.pieri@PrescientTech.com> writes:
> Internet host names are lowercase.  Anything that attempts to resolve
> Internet addresses by name will downcase the name before feeding to the
> resolver, and then the resolver should do it as well just to be sure.
> Thus, there is no reason to use anything but lowercase in host names.

Not even close, actually.

Until recently (as in, last 5-7 years or so), the Internet was almost
totally an uppercase-oriented sort of place, in terms of hostnames
and, until the advent of UNIX, usernames.  A very great many places
with long histories of Internet/ARPANET presence still have
nameservers which tend to be uppercase-centric.  I used to work at
Carnegie Mellon Univ (Class B network 128.2, the 1st Class B allocated
ever), and it is totally uppercase-oriented in its nameservers.

There is no resolver software anywhere that I've seen which
automatically downcases everything put to it.  That's not to say
comparisons pay attention to case: The requirements stipulate case-
insensitive comparisons, but any mix of case is permitted.  And
indeed, many organizations prefer to list themselves in a mix of case
to make more clear the nature of the name.

CompuServe has been generating mail addresses as x.y@CompuServe.COM
since their mail gateway was created, in 1988-89.  (I built [the
Internet side of] it.  Their mailer software was set up to generate
mixed case quite deliberately.)

If Gnus is aggressively downcasing addresses, it is broken, and should
be fixed.  Casification of hostnames is an organizational/personal
preference.

--karl

[1015] [13:03:32] pocari-sweat:~> host -a cs.cmu.edu.
The following answer is not authoritative:
cs.cmu.edu      180000 IN       A       128.2.222.173
cs.cmu.edu      999999 IN       NS      BANANA.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU
cs.cmu.edu      999999 IN       NS      PEACH.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU
cs.cmu.edu      999999 IN       NS      BLUEBERRY.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU
cs.cmu.edu      999999 IN       NS      MANGO.SRV.CS.CMU.EDU
cs.cmu.edu      999999 IN       SOA     DIST.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU GRIPE.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU(
                        100     ;serial (version)
                        3100    ;refresh period
                        5600    ;retry refresh this often
                        3600000 ;expiration period
                        600     ;minimum TTL
                        )
...
[1016] [13:03:54] pocari-sweat:~> host -a morningstar.org.
The following answer is not authoritative:
morningstar.org 172800 IN       NS      scampi.MorningStar.org
morningstar.org 172800 IN       NS      NS2.NET.OHIO-STATE.edu
morningstar.org 172800 IN       NS      scampi.MorningStar.org
morningstar.org 172800 IN       NS      NS2.NET.OHIO-STATE.edu