Date: Mon, 11 Mar 1996 12:09:13 -0800 (PST)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Sender: Mark Crispin <mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Subject: Re: Free insertion of linear-white-space 
To: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>
Cc: John Gardiner Myers <jgm+@CMU.EDU>, drums@cs.utk.edu
In-Reply-To: <23978.826572540@munnari.OZ.AU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.826574953.18793.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

On Tue, 12 Mar 1996 06:29:00 +1100, Robert Elz wrote:
> All rules must come from elsewhere - that could be the hostname
> rules (rfc952) which really is obsolete now, or from 822, or
> someplace else (section 2.1 of rfc1123 perhaps).

This is, of course, what I was referring to.  I don't think that 822 level
documents should be applying such rules -- that creates 69 different things
that need to be changed when the rules change.

Make 822bis as flexible as possible, and let some other document restrict the
scope.

> Note that 1123 says
> (if interpreted the way it seems to be written) that user@10.1.2.3
> SHOULD be acceptable - where we all know that it isn't, and we
> most certainly don't want it to be.

It means a host with name 10.1.2.3, doesn't it?  As long as no top-level
domains of 3, etc. are ever registered, this should not be a problem in actual
practice.

> In any case, deleting . (at least) from specials was rejected,
> not because of what it mighth permit in the domain, but because
> of what it would permit in the local part (where there are
> certainly no other rules that can apply).

IMHO, this is an extremely bad excuse.

What right (other than 822's unfortunate precedent) do we have for restricting
the use of "." in the local-part?  I argued this with Dave 15 years ago, and
never got a satisfactory answer (the actual reason is that once upon a time
"." was going to be used as a soft-@ for routing).

Remove "." from specials, and if you insist have a "SHOULD NOT" for leading or
trailing "." in local-part.  Once you do this, incredible amounts of
complexity start collapsing.