From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 08:28:30 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Apr 2003 17:49:51 -0400
> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> said...
>>>>>2.3 The content of the first line of a header MUST NOT consist of WSP only
>>>>> (though such SHOULD be accepted).
>>Bear in mind that there is no such restriction in either RFC 822 or
>>2822, that there are such things as mail-to-news gateways and combined
>>UAs.
>>
>>Is the restriction still relevant to current news software, or is it
>>a vestige of ancient software which is no longer used?
>
>
> It was taken from son-of-1036. Perhaps Henry should speak up, but I
> think it is related to that obligatory SP after the ":". If some agent
> somewhere tries to remove trailing whitespace (not allowed, but that
> will not stop it from happening), then that SP may get removed as well,
> and something else will break further down the line.
Specifically what (in current news software) will break, and in what way?
There's no requirement for SP after the colon either, in either 822 or
2822, so again this comes back to the question of whether the old 1036
restriction is still necessary. If not, it should be dropped.
>>>>>2.7 There must not be more than one header with a given header-name,
>>>>> except where explicitly sanctioned by the appropriate standard. In
>>>>> particular, there MUST NOT be more than one Keywords-header.
>>>>
>>>>But multiple Keywords fields are "explicitly sanctioned by" RFC 2822.
>>>
>>It was in RFC 733, which predates Usenet. It's also in 822 which 1036
>>defers to on most matters.
>
>
> Are you sure? What was the date of RFC 733? Usenet is certainly quite a
> bit older than the Internet.
Yes, I'm sure. RFC 733 is dated 21 November 1977. Usenet started in 1980.
The Internet began in 1969, at which time it was known as ARPANET. IIRC,
1969 came a bit more than a decade *earlier* than 1980. You can, if you
care, follow the trail of Keywords back even further; it was also in
RFC 724, which was 733's predecessor.
> This was discussed quite thoroughly in the early days of Usefor. There
> is some software around, apparently, which looks at the "Re: " for
> various purposes, and anything which generates "Sv: " will break that.
I'm not suggesting use of "Sv: ", I'm suggesting that all of the subject
hacks should be removed from the documents. If a UA author wants to
*display* "Re: " or some localized variant for the subject when a message
contains a References or In-Reply-To field, I don't care, but it is
redundant and contrary to Subject being *unstructured* to require that
Subject be *structured* with specific content.
>>In the interest of clarity, there should be a specific list of the
>>fields affected. IIRC, there was a syntax issue with Xref last time
>>we discussed this.
>
>
> There IS a specific list of the fields UNaffected. The whole point
> was that this was intended to apply to all Netnews headers, including
> extension headers, unless there is a special reason not to.
That won't work. If an extension header field is defined as unstructured,
it can't have parameters. If one is defined that has syntax incompatible
with parameters, it can't have them. The ABNF for any field which is
supposed to take parameters needs to specifically provide for them.