ietf-822
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Re: X-* header fields (Was: Getting 2822 to Draft)

2004-01-06 00:19:13

Pete Resnick wrote:


On 1/4/04 at 2:54 AM -0500, Bruce Lilly wrote:

Pete Resnick wrote:

The only difference then between 822 and 2822 in this respect is that 822 gives publication guidelines for extensions where 2822 does not. This has absolutely *no* effect on implementations of the protocol.


There is a minor effect. A user-defined field (per 822 definition) can be recognized as such by examining the first two octets of the field name, which is quite efficient.


But *why* would an implementation care about the publication guidelines for the field? That's the *only* thing "X-" tells you.

An implementation *might* be written so as to hand off parsing of X- fields to a separate procedure, or ignore them entirely. And the ability to efficiently bypass checking against
the 100+ standardized field names *might* be considered important.

[my implementation does hand off most X- fields (one notable exception being X-Accept-Language) and unrecognized (in this case anything not standardized in an RFC or an Internet Draft that seems likely to become an RFC) to optional user-supplied functions. Separate functions may be specified for unrecognized X- (user-defined) fields and for unrecognized extension fields (or the application can point to a single function). Were it not for handling X-Accept-Language, I might have elected to bypass lookup for standard field names (via gperf) in the case of user-
defined fields.]

"X-" serves to differentiate user-defined fields from non-defined fields (i.e. those field names for which there is no IETF published definition or which the implementation does not recognize).


Again, what use is there in making that distinction? Do you think the fact that "X-Priority" and "X-Face" start with "X-" means that you shouldn't support them in your implementation or they don't have well-defined syntax? What about "X-Sender"?

I don't support them because I haven't found a specification for them in any RFC.

Is "List-ID" a non-defined field if your implementation doesn't recognize it? What useful purpose is there in differentiating fields which start with "X-"?

I do recognize and support List-ID (RFC 2919). Flexibility is one reason to differentiate; because RFC 822 made the distinction, it is conceivable that some message-processing application may wish to treat user-defined and non-standard extension fields differently. By providing for separate function pointers for the two cases, an application using the mparse library can either treat them differently (using distinct function pointers) or treat them
identically (by providing two pointers to a single function).

In order to be at all useful to implementors, registration would have to be contingent upon the existence of a stable, formal, public definition of the proposed field's syntax (with ABNF) and semantics.


Nonsense. It is useful to an implementation (especially an implementation that generates fields) to know that a field exists for a particular purpose even if its syntax and semantics have not undergone extensive review and comment or are still under development. It is by implementation that fields get stable and then they can be documented as standards.

Example:
somebody registers a "Foo" field, but provides no public syntax or semantics. As an implementor,
what am I supposed to do about "Foo"?

It's difficult to see how such problems are either unique to X- or are more of a hindrance to interoperability than for other fields. As an example, consider "Status" which was in "private" use (I believe) by BSD "mailx" decades ago, and which is currently in use by several other MUAs, and which *does* leak out; there is also a formal definition of a "Status" field -- incompatible with the private usage -- defined as one of the delivery status notification fields (RFC 3464). So neither leakage nor incompatibility seem to be unique to X- fields. Note that if BSD mailx' author(s) had used X-Status for private use, there would be no conflict with the formal DSN Status field.


First of all, the "Status" field of DSN is not defined to appear in a top-level header of a [2]822 message, so there is no "incompatibility" between the two. But let's talk about the leakage: Yes, the "Status" field leaks. Now, what can be done about that? Well, it could be documented in an RFC so that everyone could know what it means. And if turned out useful, it could be a standardized top-level header field. But what if mailx's author had instead used "X-Status"? In that case, it's DOA, because by definition it could not be documented in a standard way. So there is no way for an implementor to figure out what "X-Status" means other than by word of mouth. That invites incompatibility. So what exactly would that "X-" have gained you?

My implementation -- and I believe that it is not unique in this respect -- parses a field with a given name depending on that name and not specifically on its context. The incompatibility is that the DSN Status field has a specific syntax for the field body (viz. three dot-separated numbers) which is not matched by the BSD et al usage of Status (a string of alphabetic characters). A single field name with two different syntax definitions (and different semantics) would IMO be a bad thing, even if theoretically they could be differentiated by context; header fields do occasionally end up in message bodies due to some software inserting an empty line, and that empty line may cause top-level message headers moved into the body to appear to be MIME-part fields (i.e. if the message header still contains an appropriate Content-Type field). Mailx uses Status to store state metadata about the mail store, which is a private use. X-Status could be documented (e.g. via an Informative RFC), but not registered with IANA as an extension field, though *as* private use, there would be no reason to document it (given that X- guarantees no collision with any future registered extension field). The only reason for an implementor to care about a hypothetical X-Status field is if said implementor had reason to interact with a message store on a system that also used mailx with that message store -- that's a storage issue, not a message format or transmission issue and therefore an issue outside of the scope of IETF. So X-Status would
not "invite incompatibility" in any sense in which it matters to IETF.

There is one very good reason to use X- for private or experimental use, viz. interoperability. Use of X- as a field name prefix for private or experimental use guarantees that there will be no conflict with a formal field name. Use of other names can lead to conflicts


No it doesn't. Some "X-" field names are now just as formal as some non-"X-" field names.[...]

"[J]ust as formal"? Really? Which X- field names are defined in Standards-track RFCs? For that matter which X- field names are defined in *any* RFC? Or by "non-'X-' field names" do you
mean something other than registered extension field names?

An issue not mentioned above is migration of X- fields to a formal definition following successful experimental use. That obviously entails a name change. However name changes are not uncommon, e.g. refer to the MIXER RFCs, which define a number of fields whose names have changed. That merely means that parsers need to recognize one name as a synonym for another.


But what about generators? Because there will be parsers out there that will only interpret the "X-" form of the field, the generators must continue to send the "X-" form. Furthermore, updating some parsers is non-trivial.

By the same argument, generators will have to generate multiple versions with a single non-X- name as syntax changes during experimentation. Presumably those participating in an experiment have a vested interest in moving forward with an official implementation at the end of the period of experimentation.

Whether or not some parsers are difficult to update is irrelevant to the issue; if a parser can be updated to handle Obsoletes/Supersedes, Expiry-Date/Expires, Content-Identifier/X400-Content-Identifier, etc., then it can be updated to handle X-Accept-Language/Accept-Language. Conversely if it cannot be updated to handle X-Accept-Language/Accept-Language, then presumably it cannot handle the other (standard)
fields whose field names have been changed.


pr