From: Ralph Babel (rbabel@babylon.pfm-mainz.de)
Date: Thu Sep 12 2002 - 06:14:22 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> There is no reason why headers should not
> be defined differently in mail and news.
There are plenty of reasons; see the discussions
about the submission of articles to moderators
and the "Posted-And-Mailed:" header.
> The news headers are already a superset
> of the mail ones, because we allow UTF-8.
... which, now that mail has
taken the other route, is stupid.
Okay, so here's another straw poll for our editor to ignore:
Considering the basic similarities between mail and news,
and considering that mail is used to submit - typically
unencapsulated - netnews articles to moderators and also
to forward/gateway articles, and also keeping in mind that
- according to our beloved editor - mail and news share a
common message ID space ...
Does it make sense to have incompatible syntax
for header fields common to mail and news?
1. No, not at all. Headers common to mail and news should be
100% compatible to ease the transition between the two,
and even news-only headers should be 7-bit and use
standard MIME encodings.
2. Same as #1, except that for news-only headers,
in particular those that are critical to articles
in transit ("Path:", "Message-ID:", "Newsgroups:"), we
may well devise our own mail-compatible 7-bit encodings
for efficiency or to avoid problems with current server
implementations, or if relaxing the traditional syntax
would adversely affect the distribution of articles
within the current server infrastructure.
3. Same as #1, but no restrictions on news-only headers,
e.g. if someone includes an 8-bit news header in mail,
it's their own fault. After all, there's
application/news-transmission.
4. Yes, absolutely! Mail is Mail and News is News, and never
the twain shall meet. After all, this is our standard,
and we can do with it whatever our editor wants to.
Besides, the mail folks deserve all the problems
they can get for having ignored UTF-8.
5. ________________________________
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