Received: from localhost by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id RAA14840; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 17:31:55 -0400 X-Resent-To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU ; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 17:31:54 EDT Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU Received: from wilma.cs.utk.edu by CS.UTK.EDU with ESMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id RAA14834; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 17:31:52 -0400 Received: from LOCALHOST by wilma.cs.utk.edu with SMTP (cf v2.11c-UTK) id RAA15730; Thu, 1 Jun 1995 17:31:50 -0400 Message-Id: <199506012131.RAA15730@wilma.cs.utk.edu> X-URI: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/ From: Keith Moore To: Mark Crispin cc: "Michael D'Errico" , drums@CS.UTK.EDU, moore@CS.UTK.EDU Subject: Re: changes In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 01 Jun 1995 12:38:28 PDT." Date: Thu, 01 Jun 1995 17:31:45 -0400 Sender: moore@CS.UTK.EDU > This is the basis of my claim that "." should be removed from specials, > because the only true effect that this complex set of rules has is to forbid > an atom from beginning or ending with ".". > > This restriction is often violated (perhaps the most frequently > violated). Those of us who comply with it are repeatedly badgered > by individuals who (1) want their personal names to show their > middle initial with the period and (2) do not want their personal > names to have quotes around them. These people, unfortunately, tend > to be managers who have little sympathy for protocol purity, > especially when some other package "does it right". One of my beliefs about protocol design is that ordinary users and even sysadmins should not have to know the finer points of the protocol simply in order to use it. Users quite naturally put "."s in their names, and they shouldn't have to know better. On the other hand, if the phrase before a name gets inserted by a UA or MTA (say from an environment variable or the gecos field of a passwd file entry), there's no excuse for that UA or MTA not quoting the phrase if it's not legal. (And if the phrase isn't pure ASCII, it should be converted to an encoded-word). Keith