Dan Kohn <dan(_at_)dankohn(_dot_)com> writes:
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.
It depends on what portions of the protocol you're working with, but
tighter message IDs is a MUST, and acceptance of message IDs without those
limitations is not acceptable and will cause serious and significant
interoperability problems.
This is simply an area where Usenet cannot change. There is too much
deployed software out there that assumes things about message IDs. Trying
to write a standard that says that Usenet software should accept long
message IDs and message IDs with spaces is a waste of time. It's like
inventing a new delimiter instead of colon for e-mail headers and then
saying that mail software must accept it; you'd have more luck inventing a
completely new protocol and getting people to switch to it.
For the other bits, I also think that you're wasting your time on some of
them (like spaces after colons in headers, or like allowing multiple From
or Subject headers in the same message) and the time would be better spent
moving a few more really marginal bits of syntax on the e-mail side into
the obsolete MUST accept, MUST NOT generate category. The amount of
software that would have to change to support this on the news side is
rather large and I don't expect it to ever happen fully because those
changes offer no additional expressiveness or function. But the changes
are at least easier, so I don't feel as strongly about it.
When it comes to accepting Received headers, sure, whatever. I don't
really care. They're meaningless in Usenet messages really.
--
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>