From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 16 2004 - 17:33:31 CDT
In <407DDDD7.9030005@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>>>The ABNF permits single-component newsgroup-names in the Newsgroups
>>>header field, i.e. it is syntactically legal.
>>
>>
>> You take a very narrow view of the term "syntactically legal"
>No, I am pointing out the fact that the ABNF does not agree with the
>text of the draft. That discrepancy can and should be rectified.
If the text of the draft specifies addtional restrictions over and above
the syntax of some construct as defined by the ABNF, then the text of the
draft wins over the ABNF. To then say that "That illegal construct is
syntactically legal" is then mere sophistry.
>> That is exactly the sort of extension we might be able to make in the
>> future once we have established that MIME-style parameters are a feature
>> of all headers. But for the moment it is a recipe for causing all sorts of
>> presently working things to stop working.
>No, the proposal has nothing whatsoever to do with "MIME-style parameters".
>In fact, you have maintained that such parameters cannot be used with any
>field whose field body might contain email addresses, so effectively you
>have proved my earlier point that specifying such parameters in the syntax
>is a premature constraint on possible future directions.
That would not apply if the email address were to be included within some
parameter, as in
Followup-To: poster; address="foo@example.com"
However, the point is moot, since we are not in the position to be able to
introduce such a feature at the present time.
>> How can generating a particular string possibly be "case sensitive"? There
>> is no burden in writing the correct string, whatever it may be, as a
>> literal in your program. The burden arises in those programs which need to
>> interpret the string.
>The burden is in requiring existing agents which generate "RE: " to change.
>At least one such agent is among the three most widely used ones on Usenet.
I have already said that if you wish to relax the "case sensitive"
restriction regarding "Re: " in the present texts, then you should start
a new thread to propose that. and see if others on this WG support the
idea.
-- 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