In <fchleg$rj$1(_at_)sea(_dot_)gmane(_dot_)org> "Frank Ellermann"
<nobody(_at_)xyzzy(_dot_)claranet(_dot_)de> writes:
Pete Resnick wrote:
There undoubtedly exists software within Netnews that will break if
this SP is absent...
... since it is the invariable practice within email MUAs to include
this SP, putting such a MUST in email would incur no problems...
[...]
Undoubtedly? Invariable? Use of these words *increase* rather than
decrease my suspicion, and therefore my desire to leave things
exactly as they are now.
The "magic SP" (mandatory SP after colon) in Netnews is a rather ugly
Netnews idiosyncrasy. It's not possible to change it decades after
RFC 1036. And it's IMO also not desirable to copy the "magic SP" as
is to 2822upd-03, example:
IIRC at the moment (RFC 2822) almost all structured fields use the
syntax "name:" [CFWS] more-stuff CRLF for some value of more-stuff
not starting with WSP or comments.
I think the best way around this problem would be to write in some text
such as:
Although in all header fields the CFWS following the colon is optional,
it is customary to place at least one SP there; moreover such a SP is
mandatory in some related protocols (notably [NETNEWS]). In order to
facilitate interoperability with such related protocols, that SP
SHOULD normally be present.
{[NETNEWS] would then be an informative reference to the current USEFOR
draft, which has already passed IESG review.}
That would still leave possible problems with an email header that was
folded immediately after that SP (as allowed by Email but forbidden by
Netnews), but I think we could live with that (it happens rarely, and
would only cause actual breakage in News systems if some intermediate
agent had discarded that trailing SP).
Wrt the Message-ID I'd be happy if we arrive at a syntax for the RHS
without quoted-pairs and without NO-WS-CTL. The approved USEFOR I-D
still allows \[, \\, and \]. Let's please get rid of this cruft, it
would be horrible in news-URLs (%5C%5B, %5C%5C, %5C%5D). Plausible
Message-IDs don't need quoted-pairs in the RHS. Please correct me
if you know a case (MIXER or similar) where that's not true.
Agreed. I would like to get rid of quoted-pair in no-fold-literal even if
it is retained in domain-literal. I have no problem in allowing '\' as an
allowed character in no-fold-literal - just so long as it has no semantic
significance different from any other allowed character.
--
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
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