--On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 23:16 -0400 Keith Moore
<moore(_at_)network-heretics(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 7/21/20 9:08 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
I think it's slightly deeper than that, which is that every
time one party adds a new header field, some number of other
parties decide that they can delete or modify that field, or
use it to validate or invalidate the message. So random
parties making random decisions about message headers are
detrimental to email reliability.
I agree with that. But that is the justification for
registered header field names, preferably well-documented and
stable ones.
I suspect this is not an issue that can be addressed by any
combination of registration and/or field-naming constraints in
the absence of instructions to message-handling software about
which fields (if any) they can add, modify, or delete.
I love the format's extensibility but I suspect there's a
point of diminishing returns. The message header has
become a garbage dumping ground, and it might need some
cleaning up.
Agreed. But also agree with Dave that it is difficult to
imagine how cleaning up such a dump (even if there were
consensus on that characterization) could be within scope for
emailcore. It probably is in scope for this list [1] but I
hope we
don't need to separate emailcore to a separate list in order to
get anything done there. ...Another decision I hope we can
defer until after the BOF.
john
[1] Noting Dave's comments about people who choose to try to
help a relative newcomer by examining possible cases and
agreeing with him that, if this list were exclusively dedicated
to emailcore work from the time the BOF proposal was announced,
those efforts would probably be inappropriate.
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