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[ietf-dkim] NEW ISSUE: remove [FWS] (was: SSP issues status)

2008-01-11 00:48:35
Jim Fenton wrote:

| [FWS] within DNS records is just wrong.
 
It's the "folding" part that is the problem
here, and we should be using [WSP], right?

Right, that solves *one* of *three* potential
problems.

The second problem might be WSP, on the general
list we just discuss this wrt John's net-utf8
draft (Last Call).  John argues that HTAB is
typically ambiguous and SHOULD be avoided. 

If you buy that you get [SP] instead of [WSP],
but I think what you really want is either *SP
or *WSP, zero or more spaces, not only zero or
one.  [FWS] without folding is *WSP, not [WSP]. 

If that's the case we hit the third potential
problem, record size.  Allowing to "waste space"
(pun intended) is not what you want in a DNS
record.  SPF allows 1*SP instead of limiting
itself to SP where a space is really needed to
separate terms.

But SSP introduces unnecessary [FWS], where it
is not required as separator, simplified:

| tag = "dkim" [FWS] "=" [FWS] ( "x" / "y" )

The "=" already separates name and value, you
could as well write:

| tag = "dkim=" ( "x" / "y" )

Conserving space might be irrelevant depending
on other issues, but the draft does not mention
UDP at all, unlike RFC 4408 3.1.4.

"Allow beautiful SSP records for human readers"
is a rather dubious design goal in RFC 5016.

 Frank

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