Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Sender: Chris Newman <chrisn+@CMU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 13:00:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Chris Newman <chrisn+@CMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Comments" RFC 822 heading field
To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199509191102.HAA20097@CS.UTK.EDU>
References: <199509191102.HAA20097@CS.UTK.EDU>
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Message-ID: <811530003.3668.0@nifty.andrew.cmu.edu>

For context, here's what RFC 822 says:

>     4.7.2.  COMMENTS
>             Permits adding text comments  onto  the  message  without
>        disturbing the contents of the message's body.

Of relevance to this discussion is the following RFC1521 excerpt:

>6.2.  Optional Content-Description Header Field
>
>   The ability to associate some descriptive information with a given
>   body is often desirable. For example, it may be useful to mark an
>   "image" body as "a picture of the Space Shuttle Endeavor."  Such text
>   may be placed in the Content-Description header field.
>
>   description := "Content-Description" ":" *text
>
>   The description is presumed to be given in the US-ASCII character
>   set, although the mechanism specified in [RFC-1522] may be used for
>   non-US-ASCII Content-Description values.

I support the proposal to deprecate the "Comments" header (although
I'm not strongly opposed to redefining it as Eric Thomas suggests).
The original purpose of "Comments" appears to be entirely replaced by
superior mechanisms in MIME (multipart structure, Content-Description,
preamble).
-----
Chris Newman <chrisn+@cmu.edu>, http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~nifty/
The worst thing about censorship is: [censored]