From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 06:06:37 CDT
In <3EC50E85.6010805@Sonietta.blilly.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> In <3EBFB65B.7040601@Sonietta.blilly.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>I allow "From: Joe Q. Public <joe@public.example>" on a MUST accept
>>>>SHOULD NOT generate yet basis, to bring us in line with RFC 2822
>If we're going to use 2822 as a base, we should be consistent with it
>unless there is a very strong reason to deviate. I see no reason to
>do so in this case, and a number of reasons to be consistent with 2822.
>E.g. there exist common UAs and other message-generating entities; if
>2822 says MUST NOT generate, then the only safe course of action is to
>not generate the construct under consideration.
The reason to deviate in this case is to be consistent with how we have
treated similar cases elsewhere in our draft. But if people want to
discuss this, then that is fine by me (but not really relevant to the
current topic, which is the USEAGE split).
It was clearly the intent of RFC 2822 that these cases should become legal
eventually. When is "eventually"? Answer: when it is safe to do so. Since
there are two standards involved, it is bound to be the case that one will
allow this case before the other. The practice within USEFOR has always
been that, if you think the time has arrived to allow some new thing
through, then people may try it on. If the result is that their articles
fail to propagate, then that is their problem. If the result is that they
get flamed, then again that is the way things get sorted out on Usenet. It
works rather well, in fact, though I agree that you could not take that
sort of apporach with Email.
As for the recent "Phrase Test" experiments, they seem to indicate that
the system already copes well enough with this case (though the experiment
is too small to be conclusive). Some agents insert the quotes to make it
legal. Some do slighly odd things (it turns out, after some experimenting
between myself and Russ, that the 'Charles H.Lindsey' oddity was a
bug^H^H^Hfeature of qmail). Nobody, so far as we know, has failed to
extract a proper addr-spec for reply.
But, as I already said, the floor is open for other contributions in this
debate.
>And we've discussed this in the past. SHOULD NOT is a recommendation, and
>sure enough *somebody* will do exactly what is recommended against, and
>yet will be able to claim conformance, since SHOULD NOT is not a prohibition.
We have already established, in earlier discussions, that one should not
breach a SHOULD NOT unless you know exactly what you are doing, and why it
is safe (enough) to do so in the particular circumstance. If you get it
wrong, it is your problem.
-- 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@clerew.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