John C Klensin wrote:
[submission]
If people are convinced that additional text is needed to
explain this subject
The second paragraph in chapter 2.1 ends with:
| the less-capable clients discussed above SHOULD be using
| the message submission protocol (RFC 4409 [42]) rather
| than SMTP.
IMHO that is fine. Please move RFC 4409 from "informative"
to "normative".
Such a move is neither appropriate nor acceptable.
A reference is normative when an understanding of it is needed to implement
some aspect of the specification at hand. This is not the case with SMTP
submit - you need understand nothing of it to implement SMTP proper.
Now, what's a little odd here is the use of terms that are customarily used to
measure compliance with the specification at hand to instead say that a certain
class of implementors really should be looking at a different document.
However, I see nothing in RFC 2119 that restricts the terms in such a way as to
preclude such usage. And since the admonition is appropriate ...
RFC 3461 and RFC 3464 are apparently also
covered by a SHOULD and therefore "normative".
We're now talking about something that SHOULD be done in order ancillary to
proper implementation of this specification. It therefore makes considerable
sense for these to be normative, and I certainly would not object to doing so.
OTOH, these are still describe a separate facility so I'm not completely
convinced our process requires this change.
Ned