ietf-822
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Re: Getting 2822 to Draft

2004-01-05 10:12:58

In <p06100723bc1aa0f50ab0(_at_)[10(_dot_)0(_dot_)2(_dot_)4]> Pete Resnick 
<presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> writes:

So, for the new year I started thinking about getting 2822 to Draft. 
(Also, 3822 is coming up in the RFC numbers :-) ). I've gotten 
started on getting a new draft together. There are a small bunch of 
nits to fix; that I can handle. There's also an implementation report 
to write. On that I'd like to get some help.

Well if we are collecting small things that need to be changed, there is
the matter of compatibility with Netnews. Usefor has tried to bring the
syntax of Netnews headers into line with RFC 2822, and has mostly
succeeded, but there are one to two nits which remain different, and where
it is plain impractical for News to change. Therefore, there are a few
features currently valid in RFC 2822 that I would like to move into the
obsolete syntax. None of them is ever encountered in current email
practice that I have seen, so no one will notice their loss.

So, in due course, I would like to start a separate thread to discuss
these.

The one possible big thing has to do with the ABNF in 2822. Out of 
either altruism or insanity, some time ago Bruce Lilly had written up 
changes to the ABNF in 2822 to do some cool things. On the plus side, 
it seems to get rid of all of the [C]FWS shift-reduce conflicts, and 
it is already done. 

One of the problems with this is likely to be that, although it is known
to be theoretically possible to construct a BNF grammar for any
context-free language, in practice it leads to humanly-unreadable grammars
in many cases, and I suspect this may be one such.

However, I see that Bruce has now posted his grammar, so I shall study it
carefully.

-- 
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_)clerew(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, 
CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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