From: Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net)
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 23:04:50 CDT
On Wed, 23 Jun 2004, Thorfinn wrote:
> Can I request that the Chair make some sort of official declaration on
> this topic? Otherwise we keep going around in circles, to absolutely no
> point.
Yes, I think we need a ruling on this one. The fundamental question is
whether we are allowed, for news purposes, to add constraints on headers
defined by the existing mail standard, or whether nothing at all can be
said that restricts mail-defined headers further.
Historically, news has long imposed *many* extra constraints on headers,
but our draft does attempt to relax a lot of them, partly in the name of
easier mail compatibility.
> The fundamental question that seems to be unanswered is, "can we specify,
> in this standard, the content of the Subject: header"?
More precisely: "...specify, in this standard, for news purposes...".
Nobody is claiming that we can change 2822's definition of it for mail;
the claim is that we are the subject-area experts for news and it is
properly our decision, not 2822's, as to whether specific 2822 rules
apply to news.
> As I see it, that's the real point of the argument. Those that want to
> say "it's unstructured" say "no, no content specification", those that
> want to do otherwise say, "yes, look it's got some sort of structure,
> even if it's not a terribly proper one".
Oddly enough, the "unstructured" faction simultaneously points to 2822's
definition of it as unstructured, and insists that we should ignore the
explicit discussion of "Re:" in 2822 because that somehow isn't really
part of the standard.
Henry Spencer
henry@spsystems.net