Message-ID: <8lDVIWC00WBwQus20X@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed,  6 Mar 1996 17:43:46 -0500 (EST)
From: John Gardiner Myers <jgm+@CMU.EDU>
To: John Gardiner Myers <jgm+@CMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Message format document outline
CC: drums@cs.utk.edu
In-Reply-To: <MailManager.826147236.7721.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
References: <MailManager.826147236.7721.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>

Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM> writes:
> Other than to document this, what is the purpose of this?

To document this.  Most people entirely misunderstand the model for
what is going on.  Please reserve judgement until you see the complete
text.

> What is this for?  Document revisions?

Primarily, though it can enhance readability in some situations:

	command ::+ "NOOP"

	command ::+ "FOO" SPACE arg1 SPACE arg2

> I have a problem with this.  I know what you're trying to say here, and it
> makes sense in context, but someone is going to be confused when he

If it's potential for confusion you're concerned with, I suggest you
wait for the complete text before assessing its clarity.

> Better would be to require field-body-contents to begin with non-LWSP,
> something like:

Depends on how important it is to allow contents of unstructured field
bodies to start with a LWSP-char.  Effectively makes on difference to
unstructured field bodies, modulo wording the boundary cases correctly.

> I have a problem with this.  I know why it's here (broken software)
> but it causes interoperability problems with compliant software.  I
> would prefer that it be brought up for discussion.

Certainly can be discussed again.  Basically the problem is systems
(such as VM/370-type dinosaurs) which add/remove trailing whitespace.
Any software which generates header continuation lines which consist
completely of whitespace would get their messages munged by such
systems so that the line became a separator between header and body.

> This comes about since you renamed optional-field to reference fields.

I know, this is a reminder to myself to clean it up later.

> I would like to see Message-ID and Subject be required.

No comment for now.

> Let me be make a radical proposal: simplify all of this to be:
>         source          ::= "From" ":" 1#address
>                             ["Sender" ":" 1#address]
>                             ["Reply-To" ":" 1#address]

No comment for now.

> Should have ReSent-Subject.

No comment for now.

> Radical suggestion: remove ".", "[", and "]" from specials.  Move the
> specification of a domain-literal to some other specification.

Permits such thing as ".foo..bar.@host.do.main", which is known to
break large numbers of parsers.  My syntax above is an attempt at a
compromise.  I'm sure this topic will be revisited Friday.

-- 
_.John G. Myers		Internet: jgm+@CMU.EDU
			LoseNet:  ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up