Subject: RE: OCP message rendering

From: "Martin Stecher" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 21:00:22 +0200

> 
> 	I will reverse the changes and document line breaks exceptions
> in the message rendering section.

Thank you.

> 
> 	I am not sure whether it is a good idea to add a special "soft
> break" character (e.g., '\' to follow C and Unix shell convention).
> Using your own arguments, people may try to use those "soft break"
> characters in real world and complain that they do not work.
> 
> 	Anybody thinks it is a good idea to add '\' for rendering
> purposes only?

I am also not 100% sure.
But such a character could then easily be used to do a "Replace All".
I hope that soft breaks in text will not be needed often.
But if we need to add, the example will not work directly neither with
CRLF nor with \CRLF. Easy transformation to working code is a plus I think.

> 
> 	One solution would be to make SP and CRLF interchangeable, but
> that complicates parsing. MIME has something like that (implied LWS
> rule), but virtually no HTTP agent we tested supported it correctly!
> 
> 	Finally, what do you think about indentation?  Can we still
> use it for rendering purposes? Please? :-)

...

> Comments/opinions?

I agree, that this is much nicer.
But it will break many more examples than soft line breaks.

I think we either need to define in OCP that any number of TAB characters
are allowed after CRLF or forget about the indentation in the text.

We could replace all existing CRLF in the BNF with NewLine and define
NewLine = CRLF *(TAB)		; if TAB is the correct name for that char

Regards
Martin

---

From: Alex Rousskov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 14:05:00 -0600 (MDT)

On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Martin Stecher wrote:

> I am also not 100% sure. But such a character could then easily be
> used to do a "Replace All". I hope that soft breaks in text will not
> be needed often. But if we need to add, the example will not work
> directly neither with CRLF nor with \CRLF. Easy transformation to
> working code is a plus I think.

OK. I will document '\'.

> I agree, that this is much nicer. But it will break many more
> examples than soft line breaks.

But this only makes a difference for editors that allow selecting
multi-line blocks of text in the horizontal-middle of a page. With
most editors, cut-and-paste from an RFC text does not work anyway
because _all_ RFC text is indented, including any examples! Thus,
normally, a person would have to remove indentation from examples
anyway.

> I think we either need to define in OCP that any number of TAB
> characters are allowed after CRLF or forget about the indentation in
> the text.
>
> We could replace all existing CRLF in the BNF with NewLine and
> define NewLine = CRLF *(TAB)  ; if TAB is the correct name for that char

It would have to be CRLF*(SP|HT) and it will slow down parsers a
little. I would vote against such syntax change.

I would prefer to separate rendering from the traffic on the wire once
and for all, but I do not want to make a big deal out of it. If nobody
else supports "nice rendering", I will abandon the idea until RFC
default format becomes something better than plain text.

Thanks,

Alex.