From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Feb 09 2004 - 07:14:15 CST
In <40246F6C.9010507@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Any requirement that any agent SHOULD NOT ... MUST do X, for any value of X
>based on specific content of an unstructured field amounts to imposing
>structure on that field.
>That means that the syntax (if it claims the field is unstructured) contradicts
>the normative text which requires treating the field as structured.
But the syntax does NOT claim the field is "unstructured". The fact that
the identifier "unstructured" is used for a certain rulename syas nothing
about whether that field is to be considered "unstructured" in the mundane
sense of that word.
To see that, you have to look at the accompanying semantics to see whether
there are further restrictions over what the syntax allows, or whether
there are further rules for interpreting its meaning. E.g. RFC 2822
contains examples of both of such further restrictions and further rules
(including a treatment of the use of "Re: ").
>We have already agreed that "Re: " is not a protocol issue, and therefore
>is not part of the syntax.
No, we have agreed no such thing. We (well, some of us) have agreed that
it is not a matter for the syntax.
Read what you have just written. You are implying that all protocols
issues MUST be covered in syntax. If that is the case, then all semantic
sections of all standards are entirely unnecessary and all IETF standards
ever written are broken. I really don't think you want to stick your neck
out *that* far :-) .
-- 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