Derek Martin wrote in
<[email protected]>:
|On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 04:49:33PM +0000, Ian Collier via Mutt-dev wrote:
|> On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 03:55:22PM UTC, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
|>> About the format of "From " lines, there is RFC 4155, but it was
|>> written in 2005 (thus it is more or less pointless for older mbox
|>> files) and is only informational.
|>
|> https://xkcd.com/927/
|>
|>> There are at least 2 bugs in Mutt (see an example below):
|>>
|>> 1. In some cases, it fails to generate an email address having the
|>> "addr-spec" syntax from RFC 2822.
|>>
|>> 2. The generated timestamp is set to the local time instead of UTC time.
|>
|> I hardly think your #2 could be considered a bug.
|
|Neither could #1.
|
|It's an information-only RFC, it's not standards track. It was a
|sly attempt to sneak in a standard for mbox, when there already
|existed numerous contradictory implementations for decades before it
Give me only one name.
|was published. In short, it's bunk, and should never have been
|published. Your XKCD reference is on point.
Again to note that we talk about RFC 822 messages, and that
standard requires at least two header lines. This is where the
POSIX standard got that from, maybe in 1988 even? That is almost
fourty years.
I give a shit, mind you. But Dr. Fink is right in that. This is
why i am finally going backwards incompatibly and am about to
introduce three different mbox types, smbox:// ("super laxe"),
xmbox:// ("super correct" <> 4155) and mbox:// (depends on some
variable setting, by default smbox, otherwise 822 plus either
^From_ or "real from line", value-dependent).
It is so that for example Torvalds with his git-mailsplit could
pretty much assume to work on somewhat proper data, nevertheless
he mentions the word "simple" in the manual and iirc
"brain-damaged" in the source.
But it is telling that most software could not deal with that
email on the 9front list that i talked about in the past, and that
an email even completely disappeared with public-inbox, and these
are expected to deal with all those attempts of all those you may
call them "kids". Not to talk about garbage embedded within
base64 that is outside the base64 alphabet. Such things exist,
right? Bunk is calling 4155 gossip, imho.
'Nuff said.
--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer, The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)
