Re: #1028 USEFOR 3.1.2 Date: Resolved, I think.

[Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Russ Allbery wrote:

>> If anyone but Bruce wants to argue in favour of recognizing
>> *all* timezones mentioned in RFC 2822, which is the logical
>> consequence of Bruce's argument, please speak up now.

> I'll argue in favor of that, since otherwise we would be
> going from blessing use if reluctantly (RFC 1036) to allowing
> parsers to disregard them without any intervening deprecation
> period.

Sigh.  That's the point of this thread.  It's a general design
principle of USEFOR to replace 2822 "MUST accept obs-ceneties"
by a "MAY accept" keeping the 2822 "MUST NOT generate".

So when Bruce wrote...

| that text is redundant and unnecessarily specific to "GMT"

...it's only his POV because he disregards the general design
principle.  Of course it's necessary to say "MUST accept GMT"
if the general rule is only a "MAY accept".  And of course
this essentially switches GMT back to the obs-2822-MUST-rule.

That's exactly what we want.  And otherwise "you MAY parse it,
else you SHOULD treat it as unknown -0000" is fine.  And as a
bonus we get a GMT => +0000 effect if Harald uses s/any/other/

If Bruce doesn't like "unknown" s/unknown/other/ is perfectly
clear, "anything not covered by numerical 2822-timezones or
the deprecated GMT or whatever you still MAY parse".

> It would surprise me if there are any existing Usenet date
> parsers that don't handle all of the RFC 2822 zones with the
> exception of the badly specified and almost never seen
> military zones.

That's in Bruce's obs-package, we're cherry picking, and IMHO
reducing this to the one cherry GMT is an excellent choice for
new parsers.

If an old / other parser wants more cherries it has a MAY and
a place (2822 obs-) to find them.  And if that has some weird
side effects for an erroneous EDT or EST it's not our fault.

Really, can we close this #1028 now ?  I promise that I won't
mention the utter dubious "MUST NOT generate GMT" anymore if
we stick to the general design priciple "no obs-ceneties excl.
GMT".  And the obs-phrase in Keywords: etc. <shudder />  Bye