From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Sun Jul 04 2004 - 19:44:15 CDT
Henry Spencer wrote:
> So what trouble, exactly, is caused by having news assign syntax and
> semantics where 2822 just sees an unstructured blob?
A user agent then cannot determine whether to apply the RFC 2822/MIME
syntax and semantics or the _other_ syntax and semantics.
> Bear in mind that
> this is exactly what we do with all the news-specific headers.
No problem, e.g. for Organization, Newsgroups, Approved, Path, etc.,
which have *no* defined syntax (provided the syntax specified does
comply with RFC 2822 section 3.6.8) or semantics in RFC 2822 or
other applications of the Internet Message Format.
> It's also
> exactly what many mail-based applications, e.g. mailing-list packages, do.
No problem e.g. with the List- fields defined in RFC 2369; same rationale.
> It doesn't invalidate the major historical form of compatibility, i.e.
> that any news article is a valid mail message.
That is not the only criterion for compatibility.
> How is it *incompatible*? Different, yes, but incompatible?
See the first unquoted paragraph in this message.