Multilingual Email Header Fields for Cross-System Compatibility
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current email systems struggle to facilitate communication between systems that support and those that do not support international multilingual mailbox email standards, leading to issues in sending and receiving email messages with non-English characters.
Innovation Solution
The method involves adding two new fields in the email header: X-alternate-address for a substitute English email address and X-address-language to specify the language, allowing for automatic conversion and identification of international multilingual mailboxes, enabling communication between systems with and without standard support.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If international multilingual mailbox email standards are implemented, then email communication with non-English characters is enabled, but compatibility with systems that do not support these standards deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces intermediary fields (X-alternate-address and X-address-language) in the email header that act as mediators between multilingual and English-only systems. These fields carry translation and identification information that enables compatibility translation without requiring changes to the core email addressing system.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by pre-translating the multilingual email address into an English alternate address and pre-identifying the language type before email transmission. This allows the receiving system to process the email appropriately based on the pre-provided information, avoiding compatibility issues during actual email delivery.
2Adaptability or versatility
If two new fields are added to email header, then identification and transmission of multilingual mailboxes is improved, but email system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by adding fields only where needed (in the email header section) rather than restructuring the entire email system. The X-alternate-address and X-address-language fields are localized additions that provide multilingual functionality without affecting the core email protocol structure.
Data Source
AI summary
Disclosed are a method for sending and receiving emails using international multilingual mailbox. The method includes: 1) setting a field 1 in a header of an email in an international multilingual mailbox, and recording a substitute English email address corresponding to the international multilingual mailbox; setting a field 2 in the header to describe the email's sender's email address in English; 2) before a sending an email generated by a terminal that supports international multilingual mailbox, checking whether the receiving terminal of the email supports international multilingual mailbox; if not, sending the email according to the English email address in the field 1; and if yes, directly sending the email; and 3) extracting the field 2 from the header of the email by the receiving terminal, determining the corresponding language, and sending a prompt in English or the predetermined language to the email recipient. The present method resolves the deficiency in the transition mechanism of the international email systems, and helps people more conveniently communicate with each other using multilingual email addresses.