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

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <87r7ejizqj.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> Russ Allbery wrote:

>The military time zones were deprecated by RFC 1123, and more tellingly,
>they also don't appear in practice.  I have no problem getting rid of them
>except insofar as it adds wording complexity.  But I *do* have a problem
>going straight from RFC 1036 to allowing servers to not even parse the
>North American time zones, which are still in use (albeit not heavily).

I think the likely harm is pretty minimal. User agents might present
articles in a funny order if some dates were interpreted 5 hours out, but
then the majority of user agents are also mail agents, so they are still
bound by RFC 2822.

And if some articles get considered as "stale" 5 hours too early, it is
not a huge deal.

I think the principles to establish are that:

1. We don't distinguish between Injection-Date and the other headers in
what we write.

2. The only options available to us are:

2a. As Harald's wording (only GMT is MUST accept)
2b. Accept all of <obs-zone> (probably apart from the military ones).

Whilst I still prefer 2a, I grant you there is an arguable case for 2b.


As regards IMAP, which Bruce raised, if an IMAP implementation sees "EST",
it should do whatever the IMAP standards say. That is not our concern.

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