Re: FWS problem

[Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles Lindsey wrote:

> the whole point of "header content" is that it does not
> include the header name

Fine, that's what you have in the draft, we're now back to
square one.

>>> The header content of every header line (including the
>>> first and any that are subsequently folded) MUST contain
>>> at least one non-whitespace character.

>> Yes, that's the erroneous paragraph
[...]
> No, that is definitely the effect we want

Now that's also back to the start of this discussion.  In
other words "name: SP CRLF body CRLF" is invalid, because
the first line "name: SP CRLF" has no non-whitespace header
content, it has only a single trailing SP.

JFTR, Bruce said that this is okay.  Your draft says that
this is invalid.  If you are right the syntax in the draft
should be "name: SP *WSP header content CRLF" everywhere.

The syntax "name: SP [FWS] header content CRLF" is wrong,
because "name: SP CRLF SP header content CRLF" is illegal.

That's what I said in my first article about this problem:
replace [FWS] by *WSP before and after any header content,
you want FWS only *within* the header content.

> Things that will certainly break existing software are:
> name: body CRLF
> name: CRLF

Okay, then "name: FWS body CRLF" is unfortunately dead.

> some "helpful" intermediate site that thinks trailing
> white space is evil might well change it to
> "name: CRLF SP body CRL", at which point it _will_ break
> existing software.

My text editor does this when I forget to SET TRAILING ON.
Is it the duty of injecting agents to fix any "name: CRLF
SP body CRLF", i.e. insert the missing SP after the colon ?

It's a major difference from RfC 2822, at least gateways
should know this problem.  But it's probably better to say
that it's a duty of all injecting agents.

> I think some existing software also breaks with
> name: TAB body CRLF
> which is why we insist on SP.

In other words, the syntax of message/news is very different
from message/rfc822.  I have no problem with this consequence,
but please say so in the draft, and don't delete message/news.

                         Bye, Frank