ietf-822
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Re: RFC 2047 and gatewaying

2003-01-12 20:12:30

In <3E1F1926(_dot_)2050203(_at_)Sonietta(_dot_)blilly(_dot_)com> Bruce Lilly 
<blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:

Charles Lindsey wrote:

The problem is not so much with software that decodes RFC 2047 (though
even that gets it wrong sometimes), as with software that encodes it in
the first place and which gets stuck as soon as it encounters a header
that it does not know how to parse.

An entity (software or human) must have syntax information in order to
correctly generate *any* header with *any* content (including RFC 2047
encoded-words).  Your sentence quoted directly above therefore makes no
sense -- an entity cannot generate a header with unknown syntax.

A human can quite well generate such a header in full accord with some
recently published standards-track RFC that allows it. He will of course
generate it in whichever charset his editor is configured to use at that
point. His User-Agent, which was written before that RFC was published
will the get "stuck" - just like I said. So it can happen, and it can
happen in email.

If it arises in Netnews, and his User Agent manages to produce UTF-8 for
it, then it is some gateway that may get stuck.- at which point that
gateway needs either to apply my heuristic, or apply one of the other
solutions suggested, e.g. drop that header, or stick an "X-" in front of
it. There is indeed room to discuss which of these things would be the
best for it to do.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clw(_dot_)cs(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk      Snail: 5 
Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

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