Html: Why does valid email definition mention Unicode?

[LeonidVasilyev]

Relevant excerpt from specification:

A valid e-mail address is a string that matches the email production of the following ABNF, the character set for which is Unicode.

RFC 5322 disallows non latin letters in local-part. Regex implementation of ABNF also disallows non latin letters in local-part.

I had read [whatwg] Comments on the definition of a valid e-mail address but found no relevant information.

[annevk]

It says that the character set is Unicode, but the actual code points mentioned are within ASCII limits.

[LeonidVasilyev]

Could you explain what is the main takeaway for specification reader? Why it is not "..the character set for which is ASCII."?

[annevk]

It just means that if you see, e.g., "@" in the grammar, it means COMMERCIAL AT U+0040 as defined in Unicode.

[annevk]

There is an open issue for non-ASCII email addresses here: https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15489.

[domenic]

It's important to remember "Unicode" does not mean "non-ASCII", it means "the modern character set used by all specifications that aren't stuck in a pre-international era" :).

[LeonidVasilyev]

Am I correct that in terms of ABNF specification (RFC 5234) you can call "@" a unicode encoded terminal value?

2.3. Terminal Values
Rules resolve into a string of terminal values, sometimes called
characters. In ABNF, a character is merely a non-negative integer.
In certain contexts, a specific mapping (encoding) of values into a
character set (such as ASCII) will be specified.

[annevk]

Yeah, that's probably roughly correct.