From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 01 2002 - 08:32:39 CST
In <Pine.BSI.3.91.1011231171933.1729B-100000@spsystems.net> Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> writes:
>Currently, X- headers are basically used as comments. I would rather see
>this outlawed, with explicit forms provided for specific desirable uses.
>We don't need a whole class of headers for comments, and much of the use
>that is currently made of them is unjustifiable noise.
Hmm! I don't think I like that, but I shall comment later in this thread.
>I note, with some interest (and considerable surprise), that while RFC 822
>made some effort to promise that no X- header would ever be standardized,
>RFC 2822 is completely silent on the matter.
Yes, but it is even worse than that. The X-header convention is not
mentioned at all! So, strictly speaking, any email with an X-header in it
is non-compliant. Even a header not defined in RFC 2822 is non-compliant
unless it is defined in some extension (e.g. in the MIME RFCs).
Well, for sure, there are (and will continue to be) lots of non-compliant
emails around (like 80% of them all). I don't think we want to go down that
route.
Anyway, perhaps Pete could comment, if he is listening.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5