Subject: Typos and new message-ID syntax in RFC 5538

From: Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:59:52 +0100

Hi,

Shouldn't a few things be changed in draft-ellermann-news-nntp-uri-11
before its publication as RFC 5538?
Especially after the changed made in RFC 5536 (USEFOR)?

   For Netnews, a
   group "example" has the same name on any server carrying this group,
   exotic cases involving gateways not withstanding.

* "notwithstanding", in only one word?  (I do not understand otherwise
the sentence if it is the verb "to withstand".)

      URI producers have to percent-encode some characters as specified
   below (Section 4); otherwise, they MUST treat a "Message-ID" without
   angle brackets for 'news' URLs as is, i.e., case-sensitive,
   preserving quoted pairs and quoted strings.

* Quoted strings no longer exist.

       nntpURL         = "nntp:" server "/" group [ "/" article-number ]
       server          = "//" authority               ; see RFC 3986
       group           = 1*( group-char / pct-encoded )
       article-number  = 1*16DIGIT                    ; see RFC 3977
       group-char      = ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" / "+" / "_" / "."

* Is it wise to redefine <article-number> here, limited to 16 digits?
We already know that an article number has in pratice more than 16 digits
because a few servers (like Giganews) currently use 64-bit numbers
for article numbers.  Therefore, why explicitly refer to RFC 3977?
The limitation of 16 digits may be obsoleted by an extension.

   However, [RFC5536] does not (yet) permit characters outside of
   <group-char> and so, to keep the syntax simple, the additional
   characters are here covered by <pct-encoded> as defined in [RFC3986],

* Shouldn't the sentence be changed?  "(yet)" is strange.  It appears
twice RFC 5538.

   Please note that "%20" (space) and "%3E" (">") are not allowed.  A
   "%5C" (backslash, "\") can only occur in four combinations, as shown
   above.  Examples:

       news://server.example/[email-masked]
       news:[email-masked]
       news:ab.cd@%5B2001:DB8::CD30%5D

* The second example is invalid.  Two consecutive dots are not allowed.
Quoted strings are no longer allowed.

     mid-left        = 1*( mid-atext / "." ) /      ; <dot-atom-text>
                       ( "%22" mid-quote "%22" )    ; <no-fold-quote>
     mid-quote       = 1*( mid-atext / "." /        ; <mqtext> incl.
                           mid-special /            ; '\"' / "[" / "]"
                           "%5C%22" / "%5B" / "%5D" )

* This syntax is no longer allowed.

   As noted above (Section 2.2), the presence of an "@" in a 'news' URI
   disambiguates <article> and <newsgroups> for URI consumers.  The new
   <message-id> construct specified in [RFC3977] does not require an
   "@".

* But RFC 5536 (USEFOR) requires one.

   SON-OF-1036

* If its RFC number is known, it could be specified.

   The work on a successor of [RFC2822] hopefully ends up with a
   simplified syntax for both sides of a "Message-ID".

* This sentence should be removed.  The syntax has been simplified by
RFC 5322.

   [RFC4289] requires an RFC for the access types registry.  Because
   [SON-OF-1036] was never published as an RFC, the following paragraph
   quotes the relevant definition:

      NOTE: In the specific case where it is desired to essentially make
      another article PART of the current one, e.g., for annotation of
      the other article, MIME's "message/external-body" convention can
      be used to do so without actual inclusion. "news-message-ID" was
      registered as a standard external-body access method, with a
      mandatory NAME parameter giving the message ID and an optional
      SITE parameter suggesting an NNTP site that might have the article
      available (if it is not available locally), by IANA 22 June 1993.

* Maybe the paragraph can be removed:  SON-OF-1036 will soon be published
as an historic RFC.

   Please note that 'news' URLs offer a very similar and (today) more
   common way to access articles by their Message-ID; compare [RFC2017].

* "Message-ID" with quotes (all other occurrences use one in the document).

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« C'est la goutte d'eau qui fait déborder le vase et qui met
le feu aux poudres. »

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:56:02 GMT

>Especially after the changed made in RFC 5536 (USEFOR)?

Yes, but 5538 is on hold until 5536 is fixed. Then it is up to Frank in
the 1st instance (though I have recently failed to contact him by email,
and he does not seem to be reading this list anymore).

So keep your fixes on hold until we get to that point.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131            Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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