From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 09:07:18 CDT
In <200305230117.DAA01933@message-id.pfm-mainz.de> rbabel@babylon.pfm-mainz.de (Ralph Babel) writes:
>Bruce Lilly wrote:
>> [...] magic numbers 30 and 71 [...] 88 characters [...]
>> 71 restriction in the Lindsey draft [...] 66 octets
>> [...] 31 limit in the Lindsey draft. [...] 997 octets
>> [...] 255-character [...] 249 characters [...] ca. 200
>> characters [...] 14 or 8 characters [...] POSIX_PATH_MAX
>> [...]
>There was a reason why I suggested that arbitrary numbers
>and current implementations' limits be separated from the
>actual format description.
Sometimes hard limits are needed for technical reasons (like the length of
a msg-id, which the NNTPext people want a limit for, even though the
actual number is somewhat arbitrary). And 998 is too well built into lots
of systems (though we do say software SHOULD accept more).
Where the limits are more cosmetic, the place to go into the detailed
arguments is in USEAGE. Perhaps we should adopt the postion that where it
is considered useful to mention them in USEFOR, it should always be done in a
NOTE.
NOTE: It is usual for the length of a component to be no more than 30
characters unless hierarchy administrators have agreed otherwise (see
[USEAGE]).
>Well, maybe in another five years or so ...
-- 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