2822upd-04 body content restrictions

On Sunday 27 January 2008 14:07:52 Pete Resnick wrote:
 
> This is demonstrably false with regard to 8-bit and binary messages. 
>  From RFC 822:

Hardly surprising, since RFC 822 obviously predated RFCs 1651-2
etc.  Internet mail transport has changed appreciably since 1982.
Also, one should be rather cautious in quoting directly from
published RFC text; in many cases that text contains errors which
are documented elsewhere (because as a matter of policy, published
RFCs are never changed) (errata, other RFCs).  RFC 822 has been
amended by RFC 1123 and RFC 2047 among others, and both of those
have published errata.  I'm sure that you're well aware of this,
as 2822 incorporated many of those widely-scattered amendments to
822.

> MIME is an extension of [2]822, which allows for more stuff than 
> those documents. Characters above 127 do not belong in 2822[upd].

My concern is that (ignoring for the moment the conflict between what
1.2.3 says that section 2 describes and what the actual section 2
text states) a parser using the full 2822 parse grammer will not
be able to parse 1994-era and modern messages.  I.e., I think that
the parse grammar *should* handle 8bit/binary content in message
bodies, because that is the reality of modern Internet mail.  2822 and
the draft under discussion are supposed to update 822 in accordance
with changes to Internet mail since 822's publication.  Looking
towards the future, ideally we won't be forced by today's decisions
into a situation where there are once again umpteen widely-scattered
documents that amend the basic IMF format in various ways.  One way
to avoid that undesirable scenario is to make at least the parse
grammar as liberal as practical in accordance with the robustness
principle.