Marshall -
I relaxed the rule too. That has led me into more problems. Now, some
instances of my software in the field have the relaxed rule, and some have the
strict rule. I have no way of exterminating the old software except hope for
the passage of time. And, of course, the old software is `right' and the new
software is `wrong'.
This all could have been fixed a long time ago with much less hassle. I
don't know who was responsible for adding dot to tspecials. I know it was not
there once upon a time. I know because I invented tspecials; expressly to
exclude dot (which appeared in RFC-822 specials) from token delimiters.
I'm sorry that I get very frustrated when I end up wasting huge amounts
of time dealing with interoperability problems that could have been prevented
if people who should know better weren't unreasonably stubborn. Perhaps I
should see having to solve the same problems over and over again as a form of
job security.
-- Mark --