On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, Russ Allbery wrote:
Usenet's restrictions on the syntax of message ID headers are very
specific and very precise, and much stronger than those of RFC 2822, in
part because message IDs are used as part of the NNTP protocol.
What are those restrictions?
Comments
in various places that mail supports them are not well-supported by
currently deployed Usenet software (although it certainly hurts nothing to
support them when writing new code, other than adding complexity). The
space after the colon in headers is not optional on Usenet. The syntax of
the Date header is restricted in ways somewhat similar to that of the
Message-ID header.
Golly gee, where's the chorus of "these are bugs that should be fixed"
now? First we hear the claim that 7-bit messaging restrictions in mail
are a "bug that should be fixed" even though 7-bit was specifically in the
standard.
Now we hear the claim that completely unnecessary restictions in
headers are necessary because of news software.
And the IETF/IESG is supposed to respect this?
- National 8-bit character sets are in widespread use in Usenet message
headers, possibly more widespread than they are in (non-spam) mail
messages. Untagged 8-bit national character sets are widely used in
various non-English hierarchies in headers as the preferred way of
including such content, and in some cases use of RFC 2047 is frowned on.
This is because portions of the news community listened to the siren song
of "just send 8-bits" offered by those individuals who song was rejected
in mail. Now the news community has a non-interoperable disaster.
But rather than fix the disaster, they seem to want to inflict a new
disaster upon the email community.
The solution to interoperability is to stop claiming that news is special,
and start playing ball with the rest of the messaging world. This means
making compromises, including at times accepting what seems to be
unnecessary limitations, in order to achieve interoperability.
-- Mark --
http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.