Re: design specifics --- the config label

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 07:26:22PM -0400, Meng Weng Wong wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have an objection to doing the config label?
> 
> The thing that returns "permit:mx; permit:spf; permit:host=foobar.com;
> permit:cidr=special-list.foobar.com; deny:default".
> 
> If not, shall we use config._smtp_client.DOMAIN label or something else?
> 


That's a matter of the yet-to-be-defined mapping function, but I'd
still propose to use  _rmx.DOMAIN, because it's short (!) and it
is actually describing something like the reverse MX.

Depending on what the RMX/TXT records contain, the spf map could be
found at 

_spf._rmx.DOMAIN or
_spf.DOMAIN

In this case we do not have any collision between RMX TXT records and
SPF TXT records.




> Any comments on the syntax of the above?

Yeah, see my draft. Since we need to keep the records short, I would 
not use "permit" and "deny". Since most of the entries will be permit, 
just omit it. If you want to deny, add an exclamation mark, this
occupies just a single character. There should be an implicit 
"deny:default" at the end of the list, so you could ommit it. 




> If we're going to do CIDR in TXT, I believe Hadmut has spent the most
> time thinking about those issues.

CIDR, especially IPv6, occupies much space in TXT, that's why I
originally chose a binary encoding. For TXT encoding I'd use something 
like 

    ipv4:10/8

and I am still sure that it is a good idea to support APL records.




> Who has experience doing RFCs?  I believe there's an XML formatting
> scheme but I don't know much more.


I've heard that too, but I didn't see it working. 

I once wrote an RFC before (1824), and I still use the same 
software: groff with an additional perlscript to fiddle a little
bit around with it (e.g. put the table of contents at the beginning).



> We could start collaboratively editing a document on a Wiki somewhere.

Urks, a Wiki is certainly not good for writing a document.

What about CVS?

regards
Hadmut