On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Charles Lindsey wrote: > >UTF-8 headers will not go into any standards-track document relating to > >news. Doing so requires unacceptable burdens on other protocols. Any > >document which attempts to standardize such a practice is doomed to > >rejection. > That is not your decision to make (and neither in the final outcome is it > mine).
My statement is based upon 25+ years of participation in the Internet protocol standards development community. That amount of time is generally adequate to acquire an understanding of what will pass muster and what will not. > However, if you wish to influence that decision, then please join > the Usefor group as a full member. The "decision" that needs to be influenced is whether Usefor will produce a document that will be accepted by the IESG into the IETF standards track. There is no question that IESG will not accept a document which breaks other protocols. I doubt that I will have to explain to IESG why UTF-8 headers break other messaging protocols. But I will anyway if the Usefor draft goes to the IESG with UTF-8 headers. > >Why is there a complete duplication of RFC 2822 and the MIME RFCs in the > >Usefor document, as opposed to using RFC 2822 and the MIME RFCs as > >normative? > Because RFC 2822 is incompatible in all sorts of awkward ways with the > installed base of Usenet, I do not believe this claim. I have implemented NNTP for years using RFC 822 and later RFC 2822. This looks like an excuse to perpetuate the false notion that news and mail are (and should be) incompatible. > and the UTF-8 material had to be accomodated. Since UTF-8 isn't going to happen, you might as well just remove it now and eliminate that excuse for the outrageous bloat in the Usefor draft. It is ludicrous that a news format document would duplicate RFC 2822 and MIME. It is unreasonable to expect an implementor to pick through both 2822/MIME and the news format document in order to grasp the differences. > No, there is no requirement AFAIK for POP3 or SMTP servers to handle > Netnews articles. They are designed to cope with Email messages and Usefor > is taking care to ensure that they need never see anything else. If they > do, then some standard has not been complied with. Are you forgetting that messages traverse both news and mail? There should be no difference in message format between the two. The only differences should be in a few headers which are specific to one or the other, but the underlying framework should be identical. The Kohn draft does this. As matters stand, I don't see how the current Usefor draft has a snowball's chance in hell of standardization. The Kohn draft has a much better chance. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
