Re: FWS problem

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <41BF26EF.33A2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>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.

I am not sure how we ever got away from 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

You are confusing two issues. Whether that provision is correct, and the
manner in which we document it (and other SP-related matters).

So no, it is not erroneous. We have discussed it many times, including
once in the last 6 months, and we have always concluded it needs to be so.
It has indeed been so since Son-of-1036.

>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.

Yes.

>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.

Maybe for our own news headers, but in some cases the syntax for the
[*WSP header] bit comes straight from RFC 2822, and so it is not ours to
change.

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

I don't think this prohibition can be made by syntax. The corresponding
provision in RFC 2822 (the one against empty folded lines) was not made by
syntax, and we are following RFC 2822 wherever possible as a matter of
policy.


>> 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 is not just text editors and injecting agents. Some half-baked
relaying/serving agent or some gateway might remove a trailing whitespace
somewhere en route, turning a possibly acceptable article into one that
would break something further on. We could not take that risk, and hence
the prohibition of :name: SP CRLF".


>> 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.

The draft makes it perfectly clear what the rule is, and that it is
different from RFC 2822.

What IS wrong with the present USEFOR draft is the definition of the term
"header content", and in particular how much of the whitespace it
includes, and that needs to be fixed.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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