On 14/08/2014 01:56, "Ned Freed" <ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)mrochek(_dot_)com> wrote:
I fully agree with Brandon, the standard SHOULD consider the use case
when a
message is transferred from one system to another as a blob (e.g. flat
file) and
the only available "metadata" is that the message is in MIME format.
Having
some sort of well defined UTF8 indicator in the header section of the
message
would make it much simpler to adopt the new standard as it would require
substantially less development effort in most cases.
I'm skeptical of the claim, but if you absolutely have to have something,
why
not add a Received: field containing a "with smtputf8" clause, assuming
one
isn't there already?
Received: headers are not very reliable, and the syntax is is not well
defined.
Successfully parsing a Received: header itself requires a lot of
heuristics.
To be honest I would not be happy to rely on them. Also, when a message
is
transferred between archive stores no new Received: header is normally
added.
Regarding Ned's concern about inconsistent states I think it would be a
workable
solution to only honour the UTF8 indicator in the headers when the UTF8
flag
is not available from metadata. In a well known UTF8 context where the
SMTP
protocol or the message store already "knows" that the message is UTF8
the
indicator in the headers can be ignored.
That assumes people will read the standard. It's far more likely that,
given an obvious indicator, they will simply use it.
Is this a serious argument? Why would you bother writing a standard if you
don't
expect people to read it?
I think it is generally desirable to reduce (or at least not increase)
the amount
of heuristics required to successfully parse a MIME message. We should
try to
learn from previous mistakes instead of repeating them.
That's the absolute worst example you could have picked, because the most
serious design error in MIME is the MIME-Version: field. You know, the
field
that tells you whether or not a given message is a MIME message. Sound
familiar?
I don¹t understand this comment. What example are you referring to? (Of
course
I am familiar with the MIME-Version: header, I have read the corresponding
RFC
many times)
Daniel
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