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RE: RFC 2047 and gatewaying

2003-01-07 19:58:56

I think that encapsulating messages with 8-bit headers as
application/news-transmission is a marginally feasible way to transmit
them to moderators.  Moderators at least have an incentive to upgrade
their tools.

However, the proposal fails utterly at supporting gatewayed mailing
lists, where mail users who previously had full access to news content
start getting an unknown attachment that they have no idea how or why to
open.

By contrast, sticking with 7-bit headers enables both moderators and
gatewayed mailing list users to continue with full functionality.

          - dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:dan(_at_)dankohn(_dot_)com>
<http://www.dankohn.com/>  <tel:+1-650-327-2600>

-----Original Message-----
From: Leo Bicknell [mailto:bicknell(_at_)ufp(_dot_)org] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 07, 2003 13:29
To: ietf-822(_at_)imc(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: RFC 2047 and gatewaying




Here's an interesting path forward, although it's probably going to get
blasted for attempting to rewrite how e-mail works, that said:

* Define a new standard for Unicode based "messages".  I'll call this
  "rfcM".  For the moment I'll suggest we think about a UTF-8 format
  similar to what e-mail and Usenet look like today, headers, body,
  UTF-8 everywhere.  (Could also be UTF-16, UTF-32, or whatever, I'm
  going to use UTF-8 just as a point of discussion.)

* Extend MIME (eg, define types) to allow for "message/rfcM".  Boom,
  e-mail is good.  On 7 bit transports we can base64 encode the part, 
  on 8 bit clean transports they can be sent raw.  At least for now
  everyone will presumably use the base64 method.

  - At this point e-mail transport RFC's should be updated for 8 bit
    clean transport (assuming UTF-8), so at some point in the future
    that can be the default choice.

* Define the new usenet format as an extension to "rfcM", adding the
  special headers and other junk necessary to support news.

Now, mail<->news is easy.  Moderators would need e-mail clients that
understand message/rfcM, but other than that there are no transport
issues.  Over time, message/rfcM would become part of more and more
mail clients, eventually allowing message/rfc822 to be depreferenced,
leaving us with Unicode clean e-mail and news.  Going the other way
is easy, e-mail that came in as message/rfcM can be turned directly
into news, things that came in as message/rfc822 would go through a
ISO-8859-1->UTF-8 translation and then be put into news.

Granted, I've left out a lot of details, but wouldn't this sort of
high level direction allow e-mail and usenet to reconverge in a 
compatable format in the future, and make the interim time not too
painful for either group?

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell(_at_)ufp(_dot_)org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request(_at_)tmbg(_dot_)org, www.tmbg.org


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