You and Keith are crazy.
Assuming your "You" means me, I must thank you for the compliment.
(Although I think it's a little overstated: I do my best, but I'm a
relative newcomer to this world, and it'll be a long time before I'm as
"crazy" as Keith. :-)
But perhaps you've missed the fact that I was *agreeing* with you, at
least on the point that any reasonable reader of the current specs would
conclude that 0-255 is permitted in 8bit.
The discussion has now moved on from what the specs *do* say, to what
they *should* say. If you are happy with the status quo (as it seems
you are) then you need to be arguing for keeping it, rather than
continually asserting what it is.
Otherwise, why 0-127 of RFC 822 is not amended?
John G Myers proposed exactly this, with agreement from Ned Freed (and
me, for what it's worth).
Tim.