From: John Moreno (phenix@interpath.com)
Date: Tue Oct 19 1999 - 14:50:53 CDT
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
> I've done a lot of the previous talking on some of these, but just as a
> summary I'll throw out my opinions again.
>
> Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > References:
> > -----------
>
> > 1. (Me)
> > Trimming SHOULD be done by removing sufficient identifiers starting with
> > the second so as to bring the total down to 21. However, software MUST
> > be able to handle References headers that contain more than 21 message
> > identifiers.
>
> > 2. (Current draft, and the default if we do not agree otherwise)
> > Trimming SHOULD be done by removing any incomplete or otherwise broken
> > message identifiers, and then sufficient identifiers starting with the
> > second so as to bring the total down to 21. However, software MUST be
> > able to handle References headers that contain more than 21 message
> > identifiers.
>
> There are problems either way; leaving broken message IDs in the header
> may cause problems and seems less clean, but that also assumes that
> software has a good idea of what is and isn't a broken message ID. I
> don't think I have a strong preference one way or the other on this. I do
> prefer one of these over saying what identifiers to retain, which seems
> unnecessarily verbose.
I think either will *do, but have a couple of quibbles -- the MUST seems,
well unusual, if someone wants their program to crash let them, and since
it is a warning that they WILL encounter messages with more than 21 id's
why doesn't the second warning (that they WILL encounter things in the
header which are NOT id's) have the same status? Particularly since it's
going to happen more often?
Trimming SHOULD be done by removing sufficient identifiers starting
with the second so as to bring the total down to 21. Non-compliant
programs will sometimes include more than 21 id's and/or text that is
not id's.
Seems to convey the intent (to warn the programer of potential problems),
without being overly long. It doesn't say exactly what is and is not a
message id, but can't that be left elsewhere? The only question I'd have
is should it be moved out into a Note?
*At least well enough that I don't feel obligated to argue one over the
other.
-- John Moreno