On Jan 18 2005, Charles Lindsey wrote:
In <7082EC9D-680C-11D9-8193-000393DB5366(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> Keith
Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:
OTOH, "header line" seems ambiguous to me - I think you must mean
something _besides_ header field because you're not using either
"header field" or the common abbreviation "header". :)
I think we need the term "header line" when speaking of the individual
lines of a header field that has been folded.
A "header line" as you propose is not a semantic unit, since folding
white space can break the information at all sorts of places, and as
the mail winds its way to its destination, folded lines can be
rearranged several times in semantically equivalent ways.
If people start using header lines in this sense, I think there's the
inbuilt potential for confusion in some types of discussion.
To me, it's more natural to associate "header line" with the fully unfolded
piece of the header which begins with a field name and colon, since such
a "header line" is invariant under mail transport (as much as possible).
--
Laird Breyer.