Re: RFC-XXXX Boundary Marking

[Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Excerpts from internet.ietf-smtp: 21-Mar-91 Re: RFC-XXXX Boundary
Marking David Robinson@relay.pri (460)

> I think one of the difficulties you are having in firming up RFC-XXXX's
> boundary-marking scheme is that:

>     o  On the one hand, it is a goal to be insensitive to the gratuitous
>        addition of <EOL>s (end-of-line - CR/LF in SMTP) by mailers along
>        the mail path.

>     o  On the other hand, you are trying to use <EOL> as the start of
>        your boundary-mark sequence.

> These goals would (at least theoretically) appear to conflict.

Excellent point.  The hope is that they don't conflict if we firm up the
definition of EOL as permitted in multipart mail, which RFC-XXXX tries
to do.  This suggests that if we're firming it up anyway, we might be
able to firm it up to the point where line counts are workable.  Does
anyone know of any MTA's that will do nasty things IF all lines are less
than 80 characters, all newlines are canonical, and so on?

To my mind, the biggest open question in RFC-XXXX is the
boundary-markers, for which we have 3 or 4 competing schemes.  With each
successive draft, the RFC seems to be turning into more and more of a
"choose any of the above" scheme, which makes me unhappy.  But I still
don't see an elegant solution.