In <479873D8(_dot_)5040409(_at_)ninebynine(_dot_)org> Graham Klyne
<GK-lists(_at_)ninebynine(_dot_)org> writes:
[*] Question for the reader: Is this still an implementation choice? I parse
headers by first running an unescaping pass over the entire header, then
parsing
the resulting tokenized stream, I know I'll accept some headers that are
strictly incorrect, but do I end up mis-interpreting or rejecting any valid
headers? I'd like the answer to be No.
That strategy would actually cause Netnews to fail utterly if applied to
the Message-ID header, which is exactly why USEFOR has had to outlaw those
quoted-pairs and severely restrict quoted-strings. Which in turn is the
reason (or one reason) why it is now proposed to remove both those things
from the relevant parts of RFC 2822bis.
I agree that it's not necessary, but non-normative text is OK.
Reading this thread, it seems to me that this is a news/mail gateway issue and
not really applicable 'within the framework of "electronic mail" messages'
(cf.
abstract), and as such the information might better belong in a separate
informative document about implementing mail/news gateways, which could do
more
justice to a range of issues in this area.
Unfortunately, mail/news gateways, which tend to be ad-hoc scripts written
by each gatewayer, are unlikely to fix theis problem (since, in practice,
99.9999% of email messages already insert that SP). Hence the better
solution is to "encourage" implementors to continue doing what 99.9999%
of them already do.
In the case of the few implemenmtors that use HTAB, there may be problems
(IIRC correctly, there is some advice in USEFOR to accept HTAB as well as
SP, but don't try holding your breath until all News sites conform to that).
--
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