On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Dave Crocker wrote:
At 10:28 AM 1/31/2002 +0000, Charles Lindsey wrote:
That is indeed the terminology defined in RFC 2822, but it is NOT the
terminology used in common parlance throughout Usenet and other places.
other places includes common conversation around the net. an individual
"slot" is typically called a 'header'. The set of them is typically called
'headers'.
That's certainly true. ("What were the contents of the Received:
header?" is a common kind of utterance.)
it would be very nice to have a better distinction than that one character,
but we are not likely to change standard language at this juncture.
I have been trying, in the documents I write, to use "header line" for
an individual "slot" because this is a phrase which I hope the majority
of non-expert readers will understand. I rather suspect that "header
field" will not be correctly understood, because in many people's minds,
a "field" suggests *part* of a line (or record).
Colloquially, "lines" suggests a vertical collection of things whereas
"fields" suggests a horizontal collection of things. Also, an RFC 2822
message is already defined in terms of lines.
However, even "header line" is a bit of a mouthful. People always
abbreviate where they can. I don't think there's any hope of eradicating
the usage of "header" to mean a single "slot". A radical approach would
be to recognize this, and redefine the terminology thus:
. A "header" is a single (logical) line with the following syntax....
. A message consists of a set of headers (called the "header section"),
followed by a blank line, followed by a body.
Philip
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10(_at_)cus(_dot_)cam(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44
1223 334714.