Dan Kohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > In general, I'm thinking about suggesting a different tact from RFC > 2822, which said that Section 3 current syntax is MUST generate and > Section 4 obsolete syntax is MUST accept. Instead, I'm thinking of > suggesting that agents SHOULD generate messages that honor current news > restrictions (e.g., no Received headers, tighter Message IDs, SP after > colon in all headers), while saying that agents compliant with the spec > MUST accept RFC 2822 syntax. That way, implmenters know what to do to > maximize the likelihood that their messages will be processed, but > there's also a push toward supporting a universal Internet Message > Format syntax across all messaging protocols.
It depends on what portions of the protocol you're working with, but tighter message IDs is a MUST, and acceptance of message IDs without those limitations is not acceptable and will cause serious and significant interoperability problems. This is simply an area where Usenet cannot change. There is too much deployed software out there that assumes things about message IDs. Trying to write a standard that says that Usenet software should accept long message IDs and message IDs with spaces is a waste of time. It's like inventing a new delimiter instead of colon for e-mail headers and then saying that mail software must accept it; you'd have more luck inventing a completely new protocol and getting people to switch to it. For the other bits, I also think that you're wasting your time on some of them (like spaces after colons in headers, or like allowing multiple From or Subject headers in the same message) and the time would be better spent moving a few more really marginal bits of syntax on the e-mail side into the obsolete MUST accept, MUST NOT generate category. The amount of software that would have to change to support this on the news side is rather large and I don't expect it to ever happen fully because those changes offer no additional expressiveness or function. But the changes are at least easier, so I don't feel as strongly about it. When it comes to accepting Received headers, sure, whatever. I don't really care. They're meaningless in Usenet messages really. -- Russ Allbery ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
