Julian Mehnle wrote:
the concept of <target-name> (i.e. macro string expansion result)
validation is entirely unknown to RFC 4408. We cannot graft it
onto RFC 4408 retroactively, as that would be a major change.
Of course we can, it's obviously a corner case upsetting developers,
and we'll find a reasonable solution for it, erratum and/or 4408bis.
I strongly object to a test-driven approach for amending/fixing
RFC 4408. We should not make the official(!) test suite "more
current" than the spec.
It's the job of the test suite to check relevant corner cases. As
long as there's no single "correct" outcome based on the spec. (or
more precisely the interpretaton of the spec. represented by the
test suite) or an approved erratum, there will be still completely
unacceptable results like saying PASS for "v=spf1 -a:%{h} ?all".
The test suite supports it to have more than one acceptable result,
but less than "any" outcome. Implementations should not crash for
such corner cases. Somebody just reported a potential dead loop
on the devel list. I think there's no "checkhost() MUST return a
result after at most one hour" or similar in the spec., but we'd
still say that it's a bug if a certified implementation simply
refuses to return a result in some corner cases.
If that's a conformance-FAIL or INCONCLUSIVE, who cares, but it's
certainly no conformance-PASS.
If you want to propose an erratum to the spec, please propose
it as a wording change.
Done, see separate article. BTW, there's now a new area director
for the IETF APPS area, Chris Newman.
Frank
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