Russ Albery 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.
Yes, although there are a variety of subtle things that fall into
this
category that one has to be careful of. That's one of the
difficulties with Dan Kohn's existing draft; in dropping all of the
language that was completely unnecessarily copied from RFC 2822, he's
also dropped some language that's actually necessary.
Mark Crispin wrote:
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.
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.
I'm working on a new version of Kohn draft that captures more of the
semantics from the Lindsey draft about news-specific restrictions. I
believe laying them out against the context of RFC 2822 (rather than
expecting the implementer to compare the documents) will produce the
best interoperability.
In general, I'm thinking about suggesting a different tact from RFC
2822, which said that Section 3 current syntax is MUST generate and
Section 4 obsolete syntax is MUST accept. Instead, I'm thinking of
suggesting that agents SHOULD generate messages that honor current news
restrictions (e.g., no Received headers, tighter Message IDs, SP after
colon in all headers), while saying that agents compliant with the spec
MUST accept RFC 2822 syntax. That way, implmenters know what to do to
maximize the likelihood that their messages will be processed, but
there's also a push toward supporting a universal Internet Message
Format syntax across all messaging protocols.
Of course, once the uniquely news syntax is specified clearly (i.e.,
against the context of RFC 2822), the WG (assuming it's rechartered) can
hash out all the MAYs, SHOULDs, and MUSTs.
- dan
--
Dan Kohn <mailto:dan(_at_)dankohn(_dot_)com>
<http://www.dankohn.com/> <tel:+1-650-327-2600>