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From: "Woodhouse, Gregory J." <gregory.woodhouse@med.va.gov>
To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>,
        "'Robert Elz'"
	 <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>
Cc: Pete Resnick <presnick@qualcomm.com>, DRUMS WG <drums@cs.utk.edu>
Subject: RE: X- fields 
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 18:19:19 -0600
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I can understand your point of view here, but there are reasons for
using the X- namespace for private extensions. For example, it helps to
prevent collisions with future IANA registered header fields, it warns
other mail programs that the extensions are private and should not be
discarded. Perhaps the issue is whether the X- namespace should be
intepreted as experimental or private (I favor the latter). We have
similar conventions for naming private extensions fields in our
databases, and this has proven to be quite useful.

==
Gregory Woodhouse <gregory.woodhouse@med.va.gov>
San Francisco CIO Field Office - Infrastructure
+1 415 744 6362
If you're going to reinvent the wheel, at least come up with a better
one.


> ----------
> From: 	Robert Elz[SMTP:kre@munnari.OZ.AU]
> Sent: 	Monday, March 16, 1998 3:25 PM
> To: 	Eric S. Raymond
> Cc: 	Pete Resnick; DRUMS WG
> Subject: 	Re: X- fields 
> 
>     Date:        Mon, 16 Mar 1998 17:40:30 -0500
>     From:        "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
>     Message-ID:  <19980316174030.32184@snark.thyrsus.com>
> 
>   | Pete Resnick <presnick@qualcomm.com>:
>   | > 2. Whether there should be any specific mention of X-* fields.
>   | 
>   | Here's my proposal:
> 
> Personally I'd prefer if the whole notion of 'X' headers was simply
> dropped as too silly to continue.
> 
> Experience has shown that X headers become every bit as standardised
> as
> non X headers (perhaps less in the RFCs, but just as much in practice)
> and non-X headers continue to be invented and used without any
> practical
> harm.
> 
> Jacob's comparatively light weight header registry proposal is a much
> better
> idea for keeping track of what is useful and what is garbage...
> 
> kre
>