Re: General considerations for new message field specifications

In <[email protected]> Bruce Lilly <blilly@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Do you believe that the recommendations in draft section
>4.2.1 do not adequately address whitespace, line folding,
>and comments (which are the principal differences in BNF
>between 822 and 2822)?

I think it might be expanded a little, perhaps by giving a practical
example (for which the case of new parameters for Content-Type headers
would be well suited).

>As for addressing both EBNF and ABNF, I believe that's
>not particularly difficult to do, as in RFC 3282 for
>example.

I don't think the notational differences between EBNF and ABNF cause any
particular problems. They are similar enought that one can easily be
translated into the other.

>> >> 3. Make it clear when the value part of any parameters that are defined
>> >> need to be quoted.
>> 
>> >That's covered by RFCs 2045 and 2231 for the fields where it
>> >applies.
>> 
>> Yes, but you are writing an informational document for people who may be
>> inventing new headers. They need to be warned of things they might easily
>> overlook.

>It hardly seems worthwhile expanding the draft to cover a
>little-used (ca. 3% of fields) feature.

Who are you to say whether that 3% will or will not increase in the
future? The fact remains that it is rather easy to miss stuff out when
introducing new parameters. Perhaps when Ned gets around to writing
RFC2045bis he will be able to cover parameters in a more general way so
that it will be easier to incorpate them into other headers in future.

>...  I certainly don't intend to turn the
>draft into a hundred page behemoth that will put off potential
>readers.

I am glad to hear it.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email protected]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5