Re: RFC2822bis, Message-IDs and USEFOR

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <frtbd5$j9s$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> "Frank Ellermann" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
> 
>> Unless somehow a horde of people with lots of energy and competence 
>> appears on the mailing list, I'm not going to entertain proposals for 
>> reopening USEFOR.

>FWIW, here's what I wrote yesterday to Lisa about this issue:

>| Meanwhile I realized that replacing the normative RFC.usefor-usefor
>| reference by 2822upd cannot work without reinventing the (USEFOR)
>| wheel to some degree - posted on the general list yesterday.

Yes, rebasing USEFOR ON 2822upd throughout is one possibility (which I
don't entirely rule out), but my suggestion was for something simpler,
namely to leave it based on 2822, but to quietly adopt the 2822upd (modulo
the '>' difference) as the USEFOR syntax. It would still be a subset of
2822 (as it is at the moment), but a smaller one which would also turn out
to be a subset of 2822upd.

The chief advantage would be a huge simplification of that present ugly
syntax, which is surely going to be most off-putting to most readers. No
sense in off-putting readers if it is no longer necessary to do so.

>| A simple recipe could be "WONTDO", 2822upd comes too late, and it
>| is too easy to get "last minute" ABNF changes wrong.

It would now be so simple that getting it wrong would be quite hard work
(and would probably imnply that 2822upd had got it wrong too :-) ).


>Even if hordes of folks with lots of energy show up - at some point
>in time somebody needs to figure out who got <toplabel> right, 4408
>or USEFOR.  If ICANN seriously wants weird one letter A-<toplabel>s 
>USEFOR got this "wrong" :-(  

I think I would strenuously resist the temptation to try to fix anything
other than arises from 2822upd. The particular issue you mention is too
esoteric to raise pracitcal problems. If ICANN has sorted out the mess by
DS time, that would be soon enough. All I want to do is to get rid of that
ugly syntax if it is no longer needed, and to ensure we nevertheless still
be consistent with 2822upd.

-- 
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