Subject: #1003 USEFOR 3.1.3 msg-id issues - attempt to focus

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 17:00:04 +0200

I see that the subject of message-id is still controversial.

It is, however, less obvious what needs resolving and how to resolve it.

I can see the following issues:

1 - Is News message-ID different from 2822 message-id?
  As far as I can see, consensus YES - there exist valid 2822 message-iDs 
that are not valid News message-ids, but not vice versa (News msgid is a 
strict subset of 2822 msg-id). And current text (with bug fixed) is a 
reasonable description of the subset.

2 - Is the RHS of the message-ID a domain, a domain|ipv4literal or a 
domain|ipv4literal|ipv6literal, or an "opaquestring"?

  As far as I can see, there is no clear-cut consensus.

3 - Is the RHS of the message-ID case sensitive or case insensitive?

  Here, I think consensus is clear, based on existing implementations' 
behaviour: Once generated, you cannot change them, and making 2 message-IDs 
with the same LHS and only different in case on the RHS is NOT a good idea.

[deep breath]
Is this a fair statement of the issues being discussed?

If so, I'll try to make suggestions for text changes.....

                        Harald

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 22:10:35 +0200

Frank Ellermann wrote:

> P.S.:  Just for fun I test it with this article.

Here's what I got back from GMaNe:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.usenet.format:29206:raw
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>

And that's what I posted (truncated header):

Message-ID: <"\[7;0m"@xyzzy.claranet.de>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:57:02 +0200
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

NetNews one Bruce nil.  Bye, Frank

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:57:02 +0200

> Is this a fair statement of the issues being discussed?

Yes.  Minor nit, "there exist valid 2822 message-iDs that
are not valid News message-ids" - that's AFAIK in theory,
in practice I've never seen such Message-IDs.  Bye, Frank

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From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 14:06:55 GMT

>Is this a fair statement of the issues being discussed?

Pretty well.

#1 just needs the bug fix.

#2 and #3 are related, insofar as once you have devised the <msg-id>, then
it is opaque from then on.

RFC 2822 clearly allows, and even RECOMMENDs, using a domain-name or an
IP-literal as the <id-right>. Frank wants two things:

#2a) To deprecate IP-literals in favour of domain-names. That would go
beyond what RFC 2822 is saying.

#2b) To use more "suggestive" names in place of <id-left> and <id-right>
(that would not make any technical difference).

My opinion is that I see no need to be more restrictive than RFC 2822
here, and that it is better to preserve the names <id-left> and <id-right>
for consistency with RFC 2822, even though we give them new syntax.

Note that I have proposed the following text as being slightly clearer
that the wording currently in USEFOR:

     NOTE: It in RECOMMENDED in [RFC 2822] that, for ensuring global
     uniqueness, the <id-right> be some domain identifier within whose
     scope the uniqueness of the <id-left> can be guaranteed. Hence, when
     following this recommendation, any <no-fold-literal> used for the
     <id-right> should be of the form of an Internet address, in
     accordance with Section 3.4.1 of [RFC2822].

-- 
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: Bruce Lilly <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:47:46 -0400

> NetNews one Bruce nil.  Bye, Frank

First, gmane isn't "Netnews", it's an interface to mailing lists.
Second, gmane is know to make specific transformations to some
message identifiers, so you have suceeded in showing that a non-
"Netnews" system in fact makes transformations that it was a priori
known to make; no surprise.
Third, the ad hominem is unwelcome.

2005-06-29:4

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From: Seth Breidbart <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:56:14 -0400 (EDT)

> for consistency with RFC 2822, even though we give them new syntax.

I think that's less consistent (and more confusing) than using new
terms for the new syntax.

Seth

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 21:10:38 +0200

Bruce Lilly wrote:

>> that's what I posted (truncated header):

>> Message-ID: <"\[7;0m"@xyzzy.claranet.de>
[...]

> gmane isn't "Netnews", it's an interface to mailing lists.

It's a news server presenting mailing lists as moderated NGs
(+ one real group °junk") plus some magic to get message-IDs
in "X-Posts" (mails to several lists) right.

But okay, let's say that one test on GMaNe isn't good enough,
I repeated it with the same Message-ID in alt.test and:

X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
Message-ID: <"\[7;m"@xyzzy.claranet.de>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:24:33 +0200
From: Message-ID Test <[email-masked]>
Newsgroups: alt.test
Subject: ignore noreply Message-ID Test

It didn't appear.  It didn't show up in junk.  I tested a
normal article in claranet.test, no problem.  If the test
article is for some obscure reason delayed we'll see it as
<http://purl.net/msgid/[email-masked]>

> the ad hominem is unwelcome.

NetNews two *1) nil  Better ?

*1: the person claiming that NO-WS-CTL worked for decades:
    <http://article.gmane.org/gmane.ietf.usenet.format/27849/match=decades>

*1: nice search engine, <http://rain.gmane.org>  You can test
    author: [email-masked], group: gmane.ietf.usenet.format,
    search word: lie (12 hits),

*1: as long as I don't say "Mr. Lilly" there's no real problem
    from my POV.
                           Bye, Frank