Re: ABNF nits

In <[email protected]> Russ Allbery <[email protected]> writes:

>"Frank Ellermann" <[email protected]> writes:
>> Russ Allbery wrote:


>>> I didn't; I just didn't change it.  This has been in the
>>> draft for quite a while.  Should I remove it?  I don't see
>>> Disposition anywhere in the media type registration either.
>>
>> You could add an "Interoperability considerations" field, and
>> put the "default disposition inline" into this field.  Maybe
>> Charles still knows where he found this ?  (= not in RFC 4288)

>Charles, do you remember?

The reason it is there is that these are application MIME types, and as
such are normally expected to be processed by the receiving agent in some
application-specific manner (as indeed these are, for inserting
information into the local Newsgroups file). However, they are also
intended to be human readable (as indeed they are at present, since they
are currently not MIME types at all, and we have cunningly designed the
format so as to fool current software into recognising them). Moreover,
in the absence of a Content-Dispostion header, RFC 2183 is silent on
whether the default is "inline" or not; so we really need to say
something.

I "invented" the "Disposition" line in the template because it seemed like
a good way to do it. However, on readng RFC 4288, I now think it would be
better to include it under an "Additional Information" line in the
template, since section 4.11 of that RFC seems to imply that you can put
anything sensible in there. The change could easily be made.

I also note that there is a "Restriction on usage" header in the RFC 4288
template, and it might be useful to say that news-groupinfo and
news-checkgroups were only for use in newsgroup control messages (in which
case the "Intended usage" header should say "LINITED USE").

Note that none of these exotic headers existed in RFC 2048, which was the
relevant standard at the time I first wrote these templates.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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