Subject: #1022 USEFOR 2.1 obs-phrase: Resolution proposal

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:09:23 +0200

I suggest the following text change to section 2.1 of USEFOR:

OLD:

   News articles MUST conform to the syntax specified in Section 3 of
   [RFC2822].  Netnews agents MAY also accept the obsolete syntax
   specified in Section 4 of [RFC2822], but they MUST NOT generate
   productions of such syntax.

NEW:

   News articles MUST conform to the syntax specified in Section 3 of
   [RFC2822].  Netnews agents MAY also accept the obsolete syntax
   specified in Section 4 of [RFC2822], and MUST accept the "UTC" timezone
   (see section 3.1.2) and the obs-phrase construct (see [RFC2822] section
   4.1) but they MUST NOT generate
   productions of such syntax.

Reason: Of the people who have spoken up, Bruce argues strongly for as much 
alignment with RFC 2822 as possible, and Charles argues for including the 
dot.

Russ argues that a realistic parser has to parse much more weird junk than 
this construct, so it doesn't make much of a difference - but I can't see a 
strong argument for keeping this one outside the "MUST accept" set.

Trying to revoke RFC 2822's prohibition against generating them is, to my 
mind, not something we should be doing in this WG.

Makes sense?

                       Harald

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From: [email-masked] (Ralph Babel)
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 18:03:25 +0200

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> News articles MUST conform to the syntax specified
> in Section 3 of [RFC2822]. Netnews agents

"Netnews agent" isn't defined anywhere. Didn't
we at some point agree that Usefor was about
on-the-wire article _format_, not "agent" behavior?

> MAY also accept the obsolete syntax specified in
> Section 4 of [RFC2822], and MUST accept the "UTC"
> timezone (see section 3.1.2)

What "UTC" timezone? "UT" maybe? And didn't we
just get rid of that one (for whatever reason)?

---

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:33:46 -0700

>    specified in Section 4 of [RFC2822], and MUST accept the "UTC"
>    timezone (see section 3.1.2) and the obs-phrase construct (see
>    [RFC2822] section 4.1) but they MUST NOT generate productions of such
>    syntax.

You meant GMT here, I assume?

Other than that, this looks fine to me.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 09:07:05 +0200

> on-the-wire article _format_, not "agent" behavior?

A number of "agents" are defined in the definitions sections. I was using 
"Netnews agents" as a way to refer to all of them. Just "agents" are 
probably better. But if we're talking about accepting at all, we must be 
willing to talk about the ones who accept. Otherwise, there's eternal 
wandering around in passages of the passive voice to be found, with no 
actor in sight.

> just get rid of that one (for whatever reason)?

My spelling error. I misspelled "GMT" as "UTC".

---

From: [email-masked] (Ralph Babel)
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:20:07 +0200

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> if we're talking about accepting at all, we must be
> willing to talk about the ones who accept. Otherwise,
> there's eternal wandering around in passages of the
> passive voice to be found, with no actor in sight.

So since we're defining an article format, maybe we
shouldn't be talking about "accepting" in the first
place, but instead simply introduce two levels of
conformance - much like 2822 with its "obs-" tokens.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:40:40 GMT

>   productions of such syntax.

s/UTC/GMT/ of course.

And then, please, a little explanation of what obs-phrase is supposed to
achieve, perhaps with a 
  John Q. Public <[email-masked]>
example. And maybe also that the "obs" in <obs-phrase> is a bit of a
misnomer. Otherwise, it is not clear to the reader why we have singled out
this particular "obs" for special attention.

>Makes sense?

Yes.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

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From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:24:58 GMT

>on-the-wire article _format_, not "agent" behavior?

I think Ralph has a point here. USEPRO currently defines two terms:

user agent	encompassing posting, reading and followup agents
news-server	encompassing injecting, relaying and serving agents

All the individual *-agent terms are, of course heavily used in USEPRO.

My preference would be to define and use those terms only in USEPRO, and
try to get by with only "user agent" and "news-server" within USEFOR. I
have not trawled throught USEFOR to see if we could actually get away with
that, but on the face of it it _ought_ to be possible.

Do people think that would be a good idea, if it turns out to be feasible?

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:08:49 +0200

> Do people think that would be a good idea, if it turns out

I'd like it.  For some time (back in 2002) I had some serious
difficulties to get the differences between posting-agent (UA),
followup-agent (UA), and injection-agent (news server) right.

                         Bye, Frank