Re: Fw: requested tweak to 2822upd grammar

Tony Hansen wrote:
>> msg-id          =   [CFWS] "<" msg-id-core ">" [CFWS]
>> msg-id-core     =   id-left "@" id-right
>>
>> This way other documents can reference the thing inside <> more
>> easily.
> 
> This change is strictly an arrangement of the ABNF and does not affect
> either the intent of the document nor what's on the wire.


Given that 2822upd has been approved and the tracker shows the document as being 
in the RFC Editor queue, I'm unclear about the impact of such a change on the 
document's processing.  Since this change does not affect semantics and has a 
minimal impact on parsing and doesn't change any terminals, and since the RFC 
Editor processing includes editing refinements of language, I would expect this 
change to have no impact on RFC Editor handling.

If these assumptions are wrong, I would prefer to skip this refinement.

However on the assumption the change can be made without having any approval or 
publication impact, I encourage the change.

Style in specifications is about human readability.  This holds true for 
meta-syntax usage too.

Over the years, I've come to appreciate the real benefit of capturing concepts 
by creating ABNF rules that might not otherwise be needed.  msg-id-core is one 
of those, as was the introduction of display-name in going from 822 to 2822.

Had we marked display-name explicitly in RFC733 or even RFC822, I doubt that 
putting the display string into a comment field would have become popular.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net