"Joe".Doe  @whatever
   Joe.Doe    @whatever
   "Joe.Doe"  @whatever

are the same thing or not. This is NOT clear from the RFC. Of course I am
aware of the fact that only the target system can define the semantics of
the local part; I am only  talking about syntax here. Your average parser
will process  arbitrary RFC822  input and create  some sort  of canonical
representation, say replace  "\A\B\C" with ABC, remove  white space where
not  meaningful,  and otherwise  create  an  address that  contains  less
syntactic garbage and  makes more sense to the end  user while being less
likely to  trigger obscure bugs  in mail  software. The question  then is
whether it is correct to remove the quotes in the examples above. Because
of the special meaning of the period this is not a given. If it were just
Joe vs "Joe" it would be acceptable to remove the quotes.

>> 5) The ability in 821 to use \-quoting inside a local-part

Removing this  would certainly break  a lot of  software. In fact  I have
found  that the  use  of  \-quoting is  both  simplest  and most  robust,
because, guess what, a lot of  software doesn't handle \" within a quoted
string,    and    this   is    often    used    for   DECNET    addresses
(ABC::XYZ%"whatever"). With the \ they either handle it or don't, there's
no special case to worry about. I don't know if we can add it to 822, but
we certainly shouldn't remove it from 821.

  Eric