On Thursday 24 January 2008 21:45:07 Pete Resnick wrote:
| There seems to be a not very strong consensus for some non-normative text.
|
| I would like some text ****and a specific place in the current
| document to put it****. If you want text, you had better provide me
| with an example and a location.
Here is my attempt:
3.6. Field definitions
The header fields of a message are defined here. All header fields
have the same general syntactic structure: A field name, followed by
a colon, followed by the field body. The specific syntax for each
header field is defined in the subsequent sections.
Note: In the ABNF syntax for each field in subsequent sections,
each field name is followed by the required colon. However, for
brevity sometimes the colon is not referred to in the textual
description of the syntax. It is, nonetheless, required.
Note: all structured and unstructured header field bodies defined
in this document allow an optional WSP as their first character.
It became a customary practice to place one SP there. Some other
protocols such as Netnews require such a SP, so a gateway needs
to modify header fields which do not conform to that stricter
specification. Moreover, some popular electronic mail message
transportation programs like to modify header fields to conform to
their idea of a pretty header field. Such necessary or frivolous
transformations can be detected by recipients and may rise suspicion
about message integrity or authenticity. Continuance of the practice
by implementors to place one SP at the beginning of newly generated
header field bodies is encouraged in order to facilitate
interoperability.
It is important to note that the header fields are not guaranteed to
be in a particular order. ...
Mark