Spencer Dawkins skrev:
Hi, Harald,
Thanks for the quick feedback (Gen-ART reviewers like this because we
can remember writing the review, and at least part of what we were
thinking about :-)
Looks like mostly goodness. If we're in synch, I dropped it from this
e-mail.
Spencer
1.2. Relation to other standards
This document also updates [RFC2822] and MIME, and the fact that an
experimental specification updates a standards-track spec means that
people who participate in the experiment have to consider those
standards updated.
Process: The ID Tracker is showing this draft in Last Call status,
but I
can't find (in the archive or in my personal folders) any Last Call
announcement, which I was looking for, in order to check how Chris
explained
the downref at Last Call time - I'm expecting that it will be quite
entertaining. Has anyone else seen such an announcement on IETF
Announce?
Note: Intended status is Experimental.
The subject line of the Last Call was
Last Call: draft-ietf-eai-smtpext (SMTP extension for
internationalized email address) to Experimental RFC
and covered 2 drafts; this may be why you did not find it.
Exactly right (I was scanning by subject). While I'm amazed that the
downref isn't being called out in the Last Call announcement, I think
RFC tracks and standards levels are so arbitrary that they are
useless, so I'm not complaining - I was trying to figure out if there
really had been a Last Call announcement sent, that's all.
I actually don't see a downref here - this is an Experimental updating a
Draft Standard (or Full; I don't remember current status well). If
anything, this is unusual as an upref, not a downref....
4. Changes on Message Header Fields
This protocol does NOT change the definition of header field names.
technical: I'm confused here. Is this text saying "does not change
header
field names"? I would have thought this specification is exactly
changing
the definition of header field names...
It does not change the definition of header field NAMES (which remain
ASCII), but changes the definition of header field BODIES (which used
to be ASCII, but are now UTF-8).
That is, only the bodies of header fields are allowed to have UTF-8
characters; the rules in [RFC2822] for header field names are not
changed.
And this sentence is saying that. How can we express this more clearly?
Ah. You filled in the missing piece for me here. Perhaps something like
"This protocol does NOT change the [RFC2822] rules for defining header
field names. The bodies of header fields are allowed to contain UTF-8
characters, but the header field names themselves must contain ASCII
characters."
That seems like a good editorial suggestion to me. Thanks!
Interoperability considerations: The media type provides
functionality similar to the message/rfc822 content type for email
messages with international email headers. When there is a need
to embed or return such content in another message, there is
generally an option to use this media type and leave the content
unchanged or downconvert the content to message/rfc822. Both of
these choices will interoperate with the installed base, but with
different properties. Systems unaware of international headers
will typically treat a message/global body part as an unknown
attachment, while they will understand the structure of a message/
rfc822. However, systems which understand message/global will
provide functionality superior to the result of a down-conversion
to message/rfc822. The most interoperable choice depends on the
deployed software.
technical: not sure what the last sentence actually means. "We don't
know
what the most interoperable choice will be"? Text in the same
paragraph says
both choices are interoperable. If that text is correct, I don't
understand
what you're saying here.
Would it be better to say "the most useful choice"? It's likely to be
the difference between a compliant MUA offering to dump the message
to a file and displaying it as a message...
"The most useful choice" seems very reasonable. The current text seems
to contradict other text in the same paragraph.
5. Security Considerations
Because UTF-8 often requires several octets to encode a single
character, internationalized local parts may cause mail addresses to
become longer. As specified in [RFC2822], each line of characters
MUST be no more 998 octets, excluding the CRLF.
clarity: s/CRLF/CRLF, even when UTF-8 characters are being used/
Because internationalized local parts may cause email addresses to be
longer, processes which parse, store, or handle email addresses or
local parts must take extra care not to overflow buffers, truncate
addresses, exceed storage allotments, or, when comparing, fail to use
the entire length.
technical: this is great advice, but I don't understand how UTF-8
changes
the situation. If you aren't changing the 998-octet requirement,
software
that breaks for UTF-8 would also break for ASCII headers with the
same octet
length.
If someone uses another representation internally (for instance
UTF-16), and has a 998-character buffer, that will sometimes fit into
998 octets of UTF-8, and sometimes not. The same goes in the other
direction.... I'm sure others will think of other cases.
Thanks for the clear explanation here. This is headed in the right
direction - I wasn't impressed with guidance that says "take extra
care", but saying "must accommodate 998 characters (which may require
more than 998 octets, depending on the character set in use), and must
not overflow buffers, ..." seems clear enough to me.
I think it's more like "must accomodate 998 octets, and not send more
than 998 octets, even though the relationship between this number and
the number of UTF-8 characters is not a simple one". I see that Klensin
has picked up on this for 2821, too.
Thanks for the review!
Harald
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