Re: New 2822upd-04 - obs-NO-WS-CTL

In <p06250100c3b2cdde7d7b@[74.134.5.163]> Pete Resnick <[email protected]> writes:

>Things to note:

>1. obs-qp, obs-body, and obs-unstruct each have NUL. obs-ctext, 
>obs-qtext, and obs-dtext don't. Is that what's desired? (I'm happy to 
>move NUL into all of them. I'm more worried about removing it from 
>all of them.)

This is a good time to ask how long it is intended that the obs-syntax
should remain in the standard. One hopes that it will no longer be a
REQUIREMENT to recognize it in 1000 years time, but maybe some earlier
deadline might be in order.

How burdensome is it to have to recognize this ancient stuff? I suspect
that NUL and naked CR and LF are the bits that cause the most problem -
the rest is probably easier. So one might like to remove the NUL and naked
CR and LF sooner rather than later. For sure, there should no longer be a
need to recognize ANY obs-stuff coming off the wire, even today. We are
concerned only with ancient emails that are still in people's archives.

So, a Question: Were NUL and naked CR and LF ever used in significant
quantity in real emails (as opposed to being theoretically allowed by RFC
822 and its predecessors)?

>2. text moved into the body discussion, and specials moved into the 
>atom discussion. Glad to move them elsewhere if you think necessary.

You appear to have done a good job of getting rid of NO-WS-CTL.

A couple of typos:

In 2.2 s/ unfolding"/ "unfolding"/

In 3.2.2, %d42-91 appears to have got omitted from <ctext>.

Which leaves just two items, wearing my NETNEWS/USEFOR hat.

A. I see that <quoted-pair> is still present in <dcontent>. I had hoped
that, with the more recent discussions about domain-literals that resulted
in the disappearance of NO-WS-CTL, similar arguments would have persuaded
you to remove that anomaly. Actually, removing <quoted-pair> from
<no-fold-literal> is all that is actually needed for NETNEWS compatibility
- removing it from <domain-literal> as well would just be tidier.

B. As regards the use of SP after the ':' in header fields, I proposed the
following wording (or something like it) on Sept 20th:

   Although in all header fields the CFWS following the colon is optional,
   it is customary to place at least one SP there; moreover such a SP is
   mandatory in some related protocols (notably [NETNEWS]). In order to
   facilitate interoperability with such related protocols, that SP
   SHOULD normally be present.

{[NETNEWS] would then be an informative reference to the current USEFOR
draft, which has already passed IESG review.}

I would still like to see text like that included somewhere.

-- 
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