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Date: Fri, 5 Apr 1996 07:33:48 -0800
To: John C Klensin <klensin@mail1.reston.mci.net>
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Subject: Re: "." in phrase
Cc: drums@cs.utk.edu

At 7:16 AM 4/5/96, John C Klensin wrote:
>At 20:20 96.04.01 -0800, Dave Crocker wrote:
>>	Perhaps hard.  But for starters, I have put 3 (invalid) addresses
>>in the CC field.  I don't know if eurdora will quote them, but the first
>>has a single embedded dot, the second had the embedded and a trailing one,
>>and the third and two, consecutive, embedded dots.
>
>Eudora (or some MTA that gets the message mid-way) quotes them, so the test
>is of marginal validity.  Someone should try this with an MUA/MTA pair that

	Interestingly, a few reports of breakage came back, though more
reports of the 3 strings working came back than I expected.

>But it also represents a threat to making a change.  Suppose we now
>legitimize dave..crocker@brandenburg.com.  And suppose that Dave decides to
>make local routing decisions based on the number of dots used, so that
...
>really still have no mechanism for telling people what LHSs should mean on
>the local host -- and I _strongly_ recommend that we stay clear of that
>business.

	John, I'm confused.  How does the question of making dots in
mailbox legal lead to the (admittedly dangerous) issue of dictating
meaning.  As you say, the current "meaning" of the left-hand side string is
"whatever the system cited in the right hand side says it means."  i.e., as
you say it ain't none of the business of the rest of us.

>   "dave...crocker"@brandenburg.com
>Now, is that a different mailbox?   The same mailbox as the one without the
>quotes?  Always?  Maybe?   We going to violate the "don't mess with the LHS"

	And I REALLY don't understand this issue.  quoting is quoting.
quoting is not part of the data.  since this is rather basic syntax/parsing
reality, I'm missing the basis for the question in this case.  What is
there in RFC822 or discusisons about RFC822bis that would lead one to think
that the quotes are part of the data?

>My conclusion from all of this is that, even if we conclude that it is safe
>to add this extension in terms of not causing anything to blow up (and I

	There was enough breakage reported that I think we can not make
dots in mailbox (left hand side) legal.

	So, my personal suggestion is that we remove dots from specials and
then make annotations for the situations, such as mailbox, in which some
lexically/syntactically legal characters are, "semantically" prohibited.

d/

--------------------
Dave Crocker                                            +1 408 246 8253
Brandenburg Consulting                             fax: +1 408 249 6205
675 Spruce Dr.                                 dcrocker@brandenburg.com
Sunnyvale CA 94086 USA                       http://www.brandenburg.com

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