Hey, you guys, how are Ned & I supposed to finish a new draft if
discussion continues at a rate of megabtyes of text daily? :-)
I think we have a consensus on one issue: non-ASCII headers are very
important.
We have disagrement on two issues:
-- How to do it
-- When to do it
The "How" is a very important, technical question. The "when" is
tactical. We have something resembling agreement on just about all of
the body-related issues. The working title of the RFC, for several
drafts now, has been "Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the
Format of Internet Message Bodies" -- that's BODIES, not headers.
Why would people feel that it is essential to resolve the headers issues
in the same document? I can only think of two reasons:
1. Fear that it won't get done otherwise.
2. Belief that they are inextricably intertwined.
I think that #1 is groundless -- obviously a lot of people care about
these issues. I also haven't seen any evidence for #2 -- we've argued
over a half dozen or so proposals, ALL of them compatible with the
RFC-XXXX specifications for message bodies. So I really don't see any
harm in deferring the headers issue until this RFC is done. By focusing
our attention on a smaller number of issues at a time, I think we'll
make faster progress. I vote strongly for deferring the non-ASCII
headers for a later RFC.
I also think that those people who are worried that this is a step
backwards are overestimating the importance of complying with RFC XXXX
relative to 822. Just putting raw Swedish in the headers is a violation
of RFC XXXX, but no more than it violates RFC 822. You might as well
just keep doing it until there's a "right" way. -- Nathaniel