At 01:05 PM 1/30/02 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
In general, I support the idea of a central (cross-protocol) header
field name registry, but I think it's totally unacceptable to confer
any more legitimacy on nonstandard header fields, or to define a
procedure which would effectively allow parties to bypass the
established procedures for extending protocols that use these
header fields.
I accept the concern, and I/we have tried to be sensitive to it.
There is this disclaimer:
[[[
3.2.2 Provisional header template
Registration as a Provisional Message Header does not imply any kind
of endorsement by the IETF, IANA or any other body.
]]]
Would you prefer some stronger wording?
To this end, I strongly recommend that no Normative field be
added to the registry without an IETF consensus process
(fields defined in existing IETF standards could be added with IESG
approval),
Yes, that's the defined intent...
and no Provisional field be added to the registry without
either IETF consensus or IESG approval.
... but folks who have expressed an interest in the provisional registry
aspects have argued that not allowing a reasonably full coverage all
headers, good and bad, would weaken the informative purpose of the
provisional registry.
That way, we can document existing uses of header fields without
creating a mechanism to "stake a claim" for new fields that are
ill-advised, poorly designed, or poorly defined.
Hmm... rather than raising the bar so high for admission, how about
allowing IESG to require removal of a provisional entry (that's already
there), OR to require that a "health warning" be added of they feel the
header to be particularly egregious?
p.s. I'd also prefer "header fields" to "headers". The header is the
structure at the beginning of an email message (NNTP message,
HTTP message, whatever), and it is composed of zero or more fields.
Yup ... my mistake. It has been pointed out but I've failed to fix all
occurrences so far.
#g
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Graham Klyne Baltimore Technologies
Strategic Research Content Security Group
<Graham(_dot_)Klyne(_at_)Baltimore(_dot_)com> <http://www.mimesweeper.com>
<http://www.baltimore.com>
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