ietf-822
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Re: New 2822upd-04 - obs-NO-WS-CTL

2008-01-23 13:08:29

Thanks Nick. Those goals are still worth following, even after this many years, and it's worth being reminded of them.

        Tony Hansen
        tony(_at_)att(_dot_)com

Nick Shelness wrote:
Frank,

You wrote on 01/18/2008 12:59:47:

...
For a DS it has to be implemented and needs to be interoperable in
some way, and "breaks in NetNews" would be suspicious, UAs for mail
and news likely support only one approach where possible.
...

I realize that the drums effort began so long ago that it is easy to forget its objective.

To paraphrase, it was not to CHANGE existing Full Standards (822, 1123, etc) and other RFCs that it was expected would reach Full Standard status (even though they haven't yet), but to produce a small set of documents that superseded, and where necessary (and where possible) clarified, them all. The working group reached early consensus that it could not outlaw constructs collectively allowed by these earlier standards even though the group would deprecate their use. Pete's (if memory serves me correctly, it was his invention) obs- non-obs approach was then accepted as the best vehicle to achieve this. So the only remaining issue viz the obs- syntax is simply whether it accurately captures the syntax explicitly allowed by these earlier standards and not whether these obs- constructs are good, bad or indifferent.

Nick