From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Sat Mar 20 2004 - 12:45:55 CST
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <40585281.7020302@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>>N.B. "discouraging multiple definitions of a header field name
>>for different purposes" and "encouraging convergence of header
>>field name usage across multiple applications".
>
>
> "discouraging" is NOT the same thing as "forbidding".
Yes it is a difference of degree. Given the existing standards track
protocols which do not and cannot differentiate "email" from "news"
from "local administrative and informative messages", any attempt
to redefine any field in a manner incompatible with that defined
in the common message format for all applications using that format
is going to require extraordinary justification on engineering
grounds. Especially in light of the published goals of the
registries.
> But small semantic differences, such as where
> the document for one medium ascribes meaning to certain strings in
> otherwise unstructured texts, do not lead to interoperability.
That imposes structure, the opposite of unstructured, and is
a syntactic, not merely semantic, difference. And either
syntactic or semantic differences can lead to interoperability
*problems* (you are correct, though, that semantic differences
can never lead to interoperability).
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