On Fri, 8 Jan 1999, Kai Henningsen wrote:
Uh, pay attention, please. The above is application/news-transmission, not
application/news-message, for which, if you recall, I said that the case
is far murkier.
I see no problems with application/news-transmission, assuming it is a
news equivalent to application/batch-SMTP (RFC 2442). It's something
end-users will never see.
I suspect application/news-message is a complete non-starter. The last
thing MIME needs is a new composite type. I suppose multipart/news is
possible, but ugly. I doubt there will be sufficient motivation for MUA
authors to add good support for such an optional and ugly type.
The solution I prefer is:
* Create rules for UTF-8 headers and downgrading thereof.
* Create UTF8HEADER SMTP extension. Provides RFC 2047 downgrading for
both top level headers and nested message/rfc822 headers.
* Extend message/rfc822 to permit 8-bit headers in appropriate transports
and to use: Content-Type: message/rfc822; variant=news
* Permit use of 8-bit "message/rfc822; variant=news" with any SMTP server
that advertises UTF8HEADER.
* a news->mail gateway can use message/rfc822; variant=news, and has to
have full downgrading support.
* a mail->news gateway has to provide full upgrading to 8-bit support.
* Support for a top-level message/rfc822 is already part of MIME, although
UI quality varies. This should be sufficient incentive for MUA vendors
to improve support for an already mandatory facility.
* old gateways which don't do proper downgrading/upgrading will get yelled
at and fixed.
- Chris