Subject: It's Quiet

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:29:46 GMT

Yes, I know. However, some of us are involved in the happenings on
news.groups, and I gather Harald is preparing for a BOF at the IETF
meeting, and I am away for the whole of next week, so it suits me.

I have one or two ideas in mind for moving some of the issues forward,
which I shall bring out when I get back. In the meantime, we all no doubt
have other things to catch up on.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22704
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: It's Quiet
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:29:46 GMT
Lines: 18
Sender: [email-masked]

Yes, I know. However, some of us are involved in the happenings on
news.groups, and I gather Harald is preparing for a BOF at the IETF
meeting, and I am away for the whole of next week, so it suits me.

I have one or two ideas in mind for moving some of the issues forward,
which I shall bring out when I get back. In the meantime, we all no doubt
have other things to catch up on.

-- 
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

Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 11:38:31 +0200
From: [email-masked] (Ralph Babel)
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

John Stanley wrote:

> If you [Charles Lindsey] do not stop putting words
> in my mouth, I will renew my call to the Chair
> to have you replaced as an editor for this group.

Seconded. This has been going on for way too long.

To: [email-masked]
From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date:  Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:48:07 +0200
Organization:  <URL:http://purl.net/xyzzy>
Lines: 13
Sender: [email-masked]

Graham Drabble wrote:
 
> I would have thought that most emails to moderators would
> have a newsgroup header present.

That case still matches "intention to post".  But it's an
obvious case, unnecessary to mention it in USEFOR if others
think that we shouldn't mention this issue at all in USEFOR.

Otherwise I'd try to add some caveat like "moderators might
wish to disable PRA on their system (or at their ISP) while
the IESG ponders which of the two appeals is worse" <g>  Bye

To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
From: Graham Drabble <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 12:28:15 +0100
Organization: Home
Sender: [email-masked]

On 08 Oct 2005 "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]> wrote in
news:[email-masked]: 

> For USEFOR, I suggested something a little shorter:
> 
>    The Newsgroups header field specifies the newsgroup(s) to which
>    the article is posted. It MAY be used in an Email message to
>    indicate that it was also posted as an article to those
>    newsgroups, but SHOULD NOT be used in Email for any other
>    purpose (such as an email-only reply to a News article).
>    Exceptionally, it can also appear in an article emailed to a
>    moderator (see [USEPRO]). 

I would have thought that most emails to moderators would have a 
newsgroup header present.

-- 
Graham Drabble
http://www.drabble.me.uk/

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22700
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:14:43 GMT
Lines: 25
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]> writes:

>Contributors shouldn't wear hats... ;-)  I had another stupid
>idea:  If we can't define the semantics of Newsgroups: in mail,
>because this is USEFOR and not MESSFOR, then it's our duty to
>define the semantics of To: and Cc: in news.

>We could say that To: and Cc: in news is used to indicate the
>intention to post+mail.

Actually, we did say something like that in the old -article- drafts,
except that we left it open as to whether those headers were actually
included in the news version (though actually it is quite a sensible
idea).

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22699
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:12:04 GMT
Lines: 26
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> John Stanley <[email-masked]> writes:

>Were the text in question a simple "news agents (MUST/SHOULD) NOT insert a
>Newsgroups header field into email-only replies to news messages", that
>would be one thing. While it seems to imply the only time one would see a
>Newsgroups header field appearing in email would be for posted and mailed
>copies, it does not actually say that. You'd then have to get around the 
>tiny detail that sometimes a news agent does not know that the message it 
>is sending to email isn't going to be posted, too, so having it know when
>it is prohibited from doing something is not always possible.

Yes, I would regard that as an acceptable alternative way of tackling this
problem. It would be said in USEPRO, of course, and would need careful
wording to cover borderline cases such as you mention (I guess that, if in
doubt, it is better for the agent to omit the header).

-- 
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

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:32:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>If we can't define the semantics of Newsgroups: in mail,
>because this is USEFOR and not MESSFOR, then it's our duty to
>define the semantics of To: and Cc: in news.

We already do. It's called RFC2822 and we refer to it explicitly.

To: [email-masked]
From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date:  Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:50:37 +0200
Organization:  <URL:http://purl.net/xyzzy>
Lines: 18
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>>> Wearing my WG chair hat (and not my technical contributor
>>> hat

Contributors shouldn't wear hats... ;-)  I had another stupid
idea:  If we can't define the semantics of Newsgroups: in mail,
because this is USEFOR and not MESSFOR, then it's our duty to
define the semantics of To: and Cc: in news.

We could say that To: and Cc: in news is used to indicate the
intention to post+mail.

 From there implementors and 2822bis would know what to do with
the opposite case Newsgroups: in mail.

                              Bye, Frank

Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:51:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Ah! So you would accept defining it as proposed, but believed that we had
>no power to do that.

If you do not stop putting words in my mouth, I will renew my call to the 
Chair to have you replaced as an editor for this group. Chair, if you want
to prevent another blowup, I suggest you talk to the person who is holding 
the match.

At one point in time, a very long time ago, I thought it could be defined
and the problem reduced. As I've already said here, I do not think that
can be done anymore. In addition to that, we have no charter to define
email  headers.

>The point is that such appearances of Newsgroups in email always arise
>from news agents doing things which maybe they shouldn't be doing.

That statement is patently false. Unless you truly believe that a news
agent should not store the Newsgroups header field in an article that it 
saves to disk, then they can quite easily arise from email agents doing
things with articles that news agents did exactly the right thing with.

>And
>surely declaring what news agents should or should not be doing is very
>much our business.

A statement telling an email client what a header field that it sees
in email means is outside the scope of our charter. A statement telling
users what a header field in email means, when that statement is patently
false, is well outside the scope of any IETF working group charter.

Were the text in question a simple "news agents (MUST/SHOULD) NOT insert a
Newsgroups header field into email-only replies to news messages", that
would be one thing. While it seems to imply the only time one would see a
Newsgroups header field appearing in email would be for posted and mailed
copies, it does not actually say that. You'd then have to get around the 
tiny detail that sometimes a news agent does not know that the message it 
is sending to email isn't going to be posted, too, so having it know when
it is prohibited from doing something is not always possible.

But to say that the only time one sees it in email is when the message has
been posted and mailed is patently incorrect and well outside the scope.

>However, the matter is easily settled. 

Yes. I supplied text that both discusses the existance of the header
and the multiple possible meanings, as well as the fact that it is 
undefined. Telling the truth is the easy solution.

>Harald is very familiar with what
>is allowed by the IETF and seemed to think it was OK.

The problem with Harald's solution is two-fold. Not only is it an attempt
at defining the behaviour of email agents while processing email messages,
it is INCORRECT on the face of it since it tries to claim that there is 
only one meaning for the Newsgroups header in email, and that is simply
not true.

>But, for the removal
>of all doubt, it would be a simple matter to ask the IESG whether it would
>be in order for us to do it. It is, after all, "our" header.

Not when it appears in an email message. Why is it that those who argue
the loudest that RFC2822 applies ONLY to email because even though the 
title says "Internet Message Format" it talks mostly about email, are the 
same ones who feel that "USENET News Standard" applies to email as well?

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22695
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:54:10 GMT
Lines: 37
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> John Stanley <[email-masked]> writes:

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>>John Stanley, Richard Clayton and Forrest J. Cavalier argued against it, 

>Actually, John Stanley argued that first of all the message is email and 
>not news and thus outside the scope of our responsibility to be able to
>standardize it, and second that lacking the ability to standardize it the
>best we could do is document the existing uses. I didn't want it 
>undefined, I simply pointed out that it IS undefined and we cannot change
>that here.

Ah! So you would accept defining it as proposed, but believed that we had
no power to do that. If it were established we had the power, would you
accept the definition?

The point is that such appearances of Newsgroups in email always arise
from news agents doing things which maybe they shouldn't be doing. And
surely declaring what news agents should or should not be doing is very
much our business.

However, the matter is easily settled. Harald is very familiar with what
is allowed by the IETF and seemed to think it was OK. But, for the removal
of all doubt, it would be a simple matter to ask the IESG whether it would
be in order for us to do it. It is, after all, "our" header.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22694
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:46:08 GMT
Lines: 27
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>My reading is that you and I argued for the single meaning to be 
>standardized.

>John Stanley, Richard Clayton and Forrest J. Cavalier argued against it, 
>and I don't think that Frank Ellermann was arguing one side or the other - 
>he seemed to be just discussing the issues.

My reading of Forrest's message was that he was not concerned particularly
with whether we made such a rule, but that he was very concerned that, if
we did so, it needed to be clear that there was a conflict with existing
practice, and there should be some guidance given as to how to resolve
that. I agreed with him, and even proposed a revision of your wording.

But he can speak for himself if he thinks I have misinterpreted him.

-- 
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

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 13:16:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>John Stanley, Richard Clayton and Forrest J. Cavalier argued against it, 

Actually, John Stanley argued that first of all the message is email and 
not news and thus outside the scope of our responsibility to be able to
standardize it, and second that lacking the ability to standardize it the
best we could do is document the existing uses. I didn't want it 
undefined, I simply pointed out that it IS undefined and we cannot change
that here.

Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:33:30 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

--On mandag, oktober 10, 2005 15:41:54 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Wearing my WG chair hat (and not my technical contributor hat, which=20
>> continues to argue unabashedly for a single meaning), I determine that=20
>> there's no consensus in the WG for standardizing a single meaning for
>> the=20
>
>> I'll draft some text based on John Stanley's to say that this document=20
>> doesn't define such a meaning, and propose that.
>
> That was not my reading of the contributions. Several people seemed happy
> to accept the intent of the definition, but were doubtful about the manner
> in which it was introduced, or whether it was proper to introduce it. I
> think John was the only one actually wanting it to be explicitly
> undefined.

My reading is that you and I argued for the single meaning to be 
standardized.

John Stanley, Richard Clayton and Forrest J. Cavalier argued against it, 
and I don't think that Frank Ellermann was arguing one side or the other - 
he seemed to be just discussing the issues.

This is based on the 18 messages with "#1078" in them posted to the list 
over the last 6 days; you may have other input.

> If your ruling remains, what could properly be said in USEAGE?

At this time, I don't care.

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22691
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Oops...... Re: #1079 List header fields without comments
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:41:50 GMT
Lines: 34
Sender: [email-masked]

In <27F97DEEA29C2F8E8B2A40F3@B50854F0A9192E8EC6CDA126> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>--On 10. oktober 2005 10:27 -0700 Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Date is something of a special case since, unlike those other headers, it
>> does allow *trailing* comments.  (Likewise with Expire.)

>(blush) missed that. I'll remove them from the list.
>(the CFWS is part of the date-time syntax, which surprised me)

Indeed. RFC 2822 also deprecates some more bizarre foldings (and we
inherit that deprecation), but the trailing comment is regularly used to
hold a humanly recognizable (though possibly ambiguous) version of the
<zone> (such as "EST"). Indeed, USEAGE blesses that practice.

>so this is legal:

>  From: [email-masked] (Russ Allbery)

But RFC 2822 deprecates that as a regular usage, and again we inherit that
deprecation so we no longer explicitly mention it in USEFOR, though it
gets a mention in USEAGE.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22690
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:06:49 GMT
Lines: 32
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Richard Clayton <[email-masked]> writes:

>>If your ruling remains, what could properly be said in USEAGE?

>John's comments on the various different meanings would at least
>illuminate the issue for developers who had only been exposed to some of
>the examples.  I think the most sensible thing would be to suggest that
>adding a Newsgroups: header field to email is most unlikely to be a
>useful thing to do -- leastwise when viewed in the round

I think it was clear that, of the two meanings currently applied to
Newsgroups in mail, nobody wanted to bless the "this is an email reply to
a news article" version, so the choice was between blessing the "this is
both posted and emailed" version and blessing neither.

I think that second usage, at least, is going to continue whether we bless
it or not, because of the general principle that the two versions of the
message/article should be as similar as possible (i.e. both containing a
Newsgroups: and both containing a Cc: (even a To:)). Ideally, the only
differences should be in the tracing headers (Received:, Path: and maybe
Injection-Info/Date:) and in the Content-Transfer-Encoding.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: Oops...... Re: #1079 List header fields without comments
Date:  Tue, 11 Oct 2005 03:08:36 +0200
Organization:  <URL:http://purl.net/xyzzy>
Lines: 12
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>  domain = dot-atom / domain-literal / obs-domain
>  dot-atom = [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]
[...]
> the comment is syntactically part of the domain... I did
> NOT expect that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, <id-right> is only a bad name, not a bad idea, it's
more or less the same as <domain> without the [CFWS].  An
"unexpected feature" that <id-domain> would avoid. ;->

Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:14:40 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Oops...... Re: #1079 List header fields without comments
Sender: [email-masked]

--==========31E36DFF47D4F059DA06==========
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

--On 10. oktober 2005 10:27 -0700 Russ Allbery <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> In my search for simple tickets to resolve... this seems to have met
>> favour:
>
>> ADD to section 3, before section 3.1:
>
>>  The following header fields defined here do not allow comments (CWFS):
>
> [...]
>
>>  This also applies to the following header fields defined in RFC 2822:
>
>>    Message-ID
>>    Date
>
> Date is something of a special case since, unlike those other headers, it
> does allow *trailing* comments.  (Likewise with Expire.)

(blush) missed that. I'll remove them from the list.
(the CFWS is part of the date-time syntax, which surprised me)

>
>> (Note: 2822 also disallows comments in several other fields, including
>> From:, where it is only permitted as part of the "obsolete" syntax. I
>> don't think we need to mention that.)
>
> Hm, is it worth mentioning that the:
>
>     From: [email-masked] (Russ Allbery)
>
> form that, as I recall, is explicitly allowed and suggested by RFC 1036
> should no longer be used?

hmmm... I'd better double-check that ABNF.....

 from =3D "From:" mailbox-list CRLF

 mailbox-list =3D (mailbox *("," mailbox)) / obs-mbox-list

 mailbox =3D name-addr / addr-spec

 addr-spec =3D local-part "@" domain

 domain =3D dot-atom / domain-literal / obs-domain

 dot-atom =3D [CFWS] dot-atom-text [CFWS]

so this is legal:

  From: [email-masked] (Russ Allbery)

and the comment is syntactically part of the domain... I did NOT expect=20
that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          Harald, who shouldn't speak before reading ALL the ABNF....

--==========31E36DFF47D4F059DA06==========
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

--==========31E36DFF47D4F059DA06==========--

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1079 List header fields without comments
Organization: The Eyrie
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:27:24 -0700
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

> In my search for simple tickets to resolve... this seems to have met
> favour:

> ADD to section 3, before section 3.1:

>  The following header fields defined here do not allow comments (CWFS):

[...]

>  This also applies to the following header fields defined in RFC 2822:

>    Message-ID
>    Date

Date is something of a special case since, unlike those other headers, it
does allow *trailing* comments.  (Likewise with Expire.)

> (Note: 2822 also disallows comments in several other fields, including
> From:, where it is only permitted as part of the "obsolete" syntax. I
> don't think we need to mention that.)

Hm, is it worth mentioning that the:

    From: [email-masked] (Russ Allbery)

form that, as I recall, is explicitly allowed and suggested by RFC 1036
should no longer be used?

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

Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:07:40 +0100
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
From: Richard Clayton <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

In message <[email-masked]>, Charles Lindsey
<[email-masked]> writes
>
>In <A9AE5597B737D5FB45799554@B50854F0A9192E8EC6CDA126> Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
><[email-masked]> writes:
>
>>Wearing my WG chair hat (and not my technical contributor hat, which=20
>>continues to argue unabashedly for a single meaning), I determine that=20
>>there's no consensus in the WG for standardizing a single meaning for the=20
>
>>I'll draft some text based on John Stanley's to say that this document=20
>>doesn't define such a meaning, and propose that.
>
>That was not my reading of the contributions. 

so there's no consensus on their being no consensus ... ah well

>Several people seemed happy
>to accept the intent of the definition, but were doubtful about the manner
>in which it was introduced, or whether it was proper to introduce it. I
>think John was the only one actually wanting it to be explicitly
>undefined.

not entirely

        http://www.imc.org/ietf-usefor/mail-archive/msg02523.html

though there have been some helpful further comments since on what
moderators are likely to assume about incoming email

>If your ruling remains, what could properly be said in USEAGE?

John's comments on the various different meanings would at least
illuminate the issue for developers who had only been exposed to some of
the examples.  I think the most sensible thing would be to suggest that
adding a Newsgroups: header field to email is most unlikely to be a
useful thing to do -- leastwise when viewed in the round

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22684
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:41:54 GMT
Lines: 27
Sender: [email-masked]

In <A9AE5597B737D5FB45799554@B50854F0A9192E8EC6CDA126> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>Wearing my WG chair hat (and not my technical contributor hat, which=20
>continues to argue unabashedly for a single meaning), I determine that=20
>there's no consensus in the WG for standardizing a single meaning for the=20

>I'll draft some text based on John Stanley's to say that this document=20
>doesn't define such a meaning, and propose that.

That was not my reading of the contributions. Several people seemed happy
to accept the intent of the definition, but were doubtful about the manner
in which it was introduced, or whether it was proper to introduce it. I
think John was the only one actually wanting it to be explicitly
undefined.

If your ruling remains, what could properly be said in USEAGE?

-- 
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

Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 15:19:59 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: #1079 List header fields without comments
Sender: [email-masked]

In my search for simple tickets to resolve... this seems to have met favour:

ADD to section 3, before section 3.1:

  The following header fields defined here do not allow comments (CWFS):

    Newsgroups
    Path
    Followup-to
    Control
    Supersedes
    Distribution
    Xref
    Lines
    Expires

  This also applies to the following header fields defined in RFC 2822:

    Message-ID
    Date

  Several of hese headers are mainly of interest to servers,
  and servers often need to process these fields very rapidly.

REMOVE the corresponding paragraph from sections 3.1.5 (Newsgroups).

It seems that 3.1.5 was the only place the text occured.

(Note: 2822 also disallows comments in several other fields, including 
From:, where it is only permitted as part of the "obsolete" syntax. I don't 
think we need to mention that.)

                     Harald

Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 18:28:31 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

--==========A2AE5810A4B4F97852F3==========
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

Wearing my WG chair hat (and not my technical contributor hat, which=20
continues to argue unabashedly for a single meaning), I determine that=20
there's no consensus in the WG for standardizing a single meaning for the=20
Newsgroups: header in email.

I'll draft some text based on John Stanley's to say that this document=20
doesn't define such a meaning, and propose that.

                Harald

--==========A2AE5810A4B4F97852F3==========
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

--==========A2AE5810A4B4F97852F3==========--

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22681
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2005 11:27:12 GMT
Lines: 59
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]> writes:

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>[snip]

>> We make a standard. As John Klensin said near the start of the DRUMS work 
>> that led to 2821/2822, "when practice exists, our standard should either 
>> bless or curse it. Ignoring it is harmful". (quote is not exact. Too many 
>> years ago.)
>> 

>When there is self-conflicting practice, the standard should mention 
>the existence of practice that is widespread and not in conflict with
>previous standards.

I agree. Where a standard specifies something contrary to some existing
practice, it is at the very least polite to draw attention to the need for
existing practice to change.

We have had various texts covering this. Way back in the article drafts,
we had:

   The Newsgroups-header is intended for use in Netnews articles rather
   than in email messages. It MAY be used in an email message to
   indicate that it is a copy also posted to the listed newsgroups, in
   which case the inclusion of a Posted-And-Mailed header (6.9) would
   also be appropriate. However, it SHOULD NOT be used in an email-only
   reply to a Netnews article (thus the "inheritable" property of this
   header applies only to followups to a newsgroup, and not to followups
   to the poster).

For USEFOR, I suggested something a little shorter:

   The Newsgroups header field specifies the newsgroup(s) to which the
   article is posted. It MAY be used in an Email message to
   indicate that it was also posted as an article to those newsgroups,
   but SHOULD NOT be used in Email for any other purpose (such as an
   email-only reply to a News article). Exceptionally, it can also
   appear in an article emailed to a moderator (see [USEPRO]).

Harald preferred using non-2119 language, which is fair enough, but he
omitted to mention that some existing software might produce emails not
conforming to what he had written. That needs to be fixed. I don't mind
the precise wording, so long as the points are made.

I agree with what Harald has said philosophically - we just need a wording
that implies the same thing.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22682
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2005 11:45:48 GMT
Lines: 51
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>--On torsdag, oktober 06, 2005 14:02:44 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
><[email-masked]> wrote:

>> BTW, Harald's full text, which you snipped, was:
>>
>>    If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>>    message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
>>    is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
>>    and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
>>    moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).

>Charles,

>what do you mean by the term "posted"?

Well we don't actually define the term anywhere (whereas USEPRO does
define "injected" rather precisely). Loosely speaking, if I put a letter
in the tray in my employers mail room, I would say I had "posted" it. But
strictly speaking it is not posted it until the mailing clerk has taken it
to a "real" postbox (post office/whatever).

So what you had written was pedantically true. But in fact the intended
meaning of Newsgroups in an email was that there was another copy of it on
usenet (modulo cockups by relayers, etc) _in_addition_to the email that
you have just received. And that is clearly not the case in mail to
moderators, so a small caveat to cover that situation is in order.

So here is another suggestion:

    If a Newsgroups header field appears in an email, it indicates that
    the same message also appears as an article in a newsgroup (e.g. the
    email was a courtesy copy of the article, or it arose from some
    gatewaying). Some existing software may include this header field in
    email replies to Netnews articles, but this practice causes confusion
    and is deprecated.

    In addition, the Newsgroups header field also has a special
    significance when sending email to a moderator [USEPRO].

-- 
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

Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 13:24:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>In this case: "If you claim to follow this standard, you will generate 
>this header under the folllowing circumstances, and you will interpret 
>this header as if the following circumstances had been the reason for its 
>generation".

You are half-right. You can tell people how to generate messages, but when
you know in advance that existing implementations (and current email
standards) call a specific header field undefined and use it in different
incompatible ways in another medium, then telling them that they are
somehow conforming to our standard if they interpret email a specific way
is simply wrong. 

>If you blindly copy headers you don't know the meaning of into the headers 
>of your reply, your email reader is FOOBAR anyway.

That is your opinion. The opinions of those who write email (and news)
clients differ. I've been through this discussion with them already.

>Yes.
>And this misunderstanding will continue to happen no matter what our 
>standard specifies, too.

This is the fallacious "it already happens, it doesn't matter if we make
things worse" argument. If our standard says that the newsgroups header in
email means something specific, it will only make the problem worse
because you are defining it in the worst possible way. It will do nothing
to make the problem better. Being explicit with people and admitting
"don't assume nothin' about this" will help, even if only a little bit.

>Doesn't mean that we shouldn't take a position.

I didn't say we couldn't take a position. Taking a position is saying 
something like "we think it ought to mean Y", not "it means Y". We aren't
in a position to specify what it means. 

>Could you please identify the group working on "posted-and-mailed" (which 
>mailing list, and approximate timeframe, if it was an open group)?

I no longer remember the mailing list address, but it was run by Jacob
Palme, as I recall, and it was a few years ago. Yes, it was an open group,
but it was not a "working group" in the sense of an IETF group. None of
that changes anything I said. How is this constructive? It sounds like
you are questioning the validity of the discussion then because it wasn't
IETF sanctioned.

>> Do we document reality or not?

>We make a standard.

Do we document reality in that news standard or not? 

>In this case, we have two areas of application where the field clearly 
>makes sense to include in email: Gatewayed news messages and messages 
>forwarded to moderators.

That is NOT the opinion of many of the email client authors, nor is it the
way many current clients (even NEWS clients) operate. If you want to
express an opinion in our standard, put it in USAGE or GNKSA. If you want
to specify a meaning for an EMAIL header in EMAIL, get it in RFC2822-new.
It has no place in USEFOR or USEPRO.

>We can choose the same opt-out that we did for References, saying "other 
>messages may use this header; that's OK", or we can say "other messages 
>may use this header; that's broken and their problem".

Or we can use the text I provided. To which I have added a paragraph 
dealing with moderation and assumptions, at the end of this message.

>Hope this is better.

It was.

>You and I apparently have quite different opinions on what the role of a 
>standard is in the face of self-conflicting practice on the Inernet.

You and I apparently have quite different opinions on what constructive
is, as well as civil, as well as the role of a standard that was tasked
with documenting existing practice in the face of undefined and
conflicting uses of a header in a medium that we have zero control over
and no ability to change.

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>Exactly. Jacob raised this problem years ago. 

So did I.

>There are basically two
>existing practices (one meaning that this email also sent to the given
>newsgroup, and one meaning the opposite). That is an intolerable
>situation, and the only sensible way to get out of it is to bless one of
>the usages in the standard and deprecate the other. 

Were we truly in charge of the email standards, perhaps this would be
a possible (but not really sensible) way to "get out of the mess".
We do not control email standards, and we cannot change the situation.
Pretending that a large fraction (if not most) of the agents 
generating email replies to news articles do not exist is "smoke and 
mirrors", to use a certain phrase.

>Yes, it will take some while for the "wrong" usage to disappear,

This assumes that those with the wrong usage accept your opinion that
it is wrong. At the virtual heyday of this discussion, they certainly did
not accept that they were wrong; I doubt that a news standard trying to
intrude in email issues today is going to convince them.

Frank Ellermann <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>The real problems:  If I get unsolicited courtesy copies,
>reply by mail, but later I see that it was no private mail
>but only a courtesy copy, then I'm seriously annoyed.

That was the other side of the issue that we discussed at length in the
old posted-and-mailed group. The main question was: how do I identify the
places to which the message I am reading (either in news or email) has
been sent, so that I may reply in the appropriate places? Unmarked
"courtesy copies" are one manefestation; the other is unposted messages
that contain a Newsgroups header field.

> but an UA adding bogus "Newsgroups:"
> header fields to mails is definitely broken.

It is the same concept that we had in our standard with inheritable
headers. Some headers get copied, some don't. If you don't know what a
header is (like email clients looking at Newsgroups:), do you err on the
side of assuming it has inheritable properties or that it is not
inheritable? Remember, the client is being handed a full news message and
being told to generate a proto-response. It is not adding bogus anything.

>So for that case USEFOR should say that the _presence_ of
>a "Newsgroups:" header field in mail always indicates the
>_intention_ to post+mail.

Yes, we came across that hurdle in the old group, too. Nothing can
identify with certainty that a message was posted and emailed except
seeing it in both news and mail. There is always the possibility that a
news server rejected (or never saw) the article while email accepted it
happily (or vice versa). All you can determine is intent. 

But it clearly does not always indicate such intent exists. I just
prepared an email response to a news article and the third line down in
the header fields of the prototype message was "Newsgroups". This was
using a quite common, reasonably well accepted news agent. Had I actually 
emailed the message, I would not have expressed any intent to post it,
because I had none. My agent would not have tried to post it based on
the existance of that header (even though it DOES send email if I add
a To: header field -- non-orthoganal behaviour, but existing practice.)

Newgroups header fields in email mean exactly nothing, other than the
string "Newsgroups: " appears somewhere in the email message. Nothing we
say can change that; saying anything other than that is misrepresenting
the reality of the net.

  A Newsgroups: header field appearing in email is undefined. Some
  messaging clients leave the Newsgroups header field in email-only
  replies to news messages; some leave the field only in messages intended
  for both posting to news and sending via email. It is impossible to
  determine any useful information about the actual destination(s) of an
  email message that contains the Newsgroups header field from that field,
  since that header field is undefined in email and conflicting use is
  common.

  Email containing unencapsulated submissions to moderated groups may or
  may not contain a Newsgroups header field. It is assumed that email sent
  to a moderated group's submission address (either directly by a user or
  through a news agent) is intended for posting to that group,
  irrespective of any Newsgroups header field the email may contain.  
  Such email sans a Newsgroups header field sent to a submission address
  shared by several moderated groups is undefined behaviour and the result
  is up to the discretion of the moderator.

Whether this text appears in USEFOR, USEPRO, or USAGE is an exercise left
for later discussion. What is important is that we NOT try pretending that
Newsgroups header fields in email are defined any specific way just 
because we want them to be.

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 20:03:37 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

--On torsdag, oktober 06, 2005 14:02:44 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> BTW, Harald's full text, which you snipped, was:
>
>    If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>    message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
>    is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
>    and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
>    moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).
>
> It is necessary to mention the special usage for moderators, but that last
> bit is not quite right because then it does not indicate that the message
> _has_ been posted to a newsgroup - rather that it (hopefully) will be. So
> a better last bit would be:
>
>    In addition, the Newsgroups header field has a special significance
>    when sending email to a moderator [USEPRO].

Charles,

what do you mean by the term "posted"?

I've always thought of it as "the NNTP transaction where the article leaves 
my newsreader and enters the mysterious guts of the news system" - the 
transaction occuring between the "posting agent" and the "injecting agent".

You seem to be using it here in the meaning of "the transaction where the 
message is finally given to a newsserver that decides it is ready for 
distribution" - between the "injecting agent" and the "relaying agent".

Alternatively, what you write could indicate that you regard the whole 
process of submission, approval and injection as "posting" - but that means 
that we can have articles where the question "is it posted or not" doesn't 
have a definite answer..... it is "inside the process"....

                         Harald

To: [email-masked]
From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date:  Thu, 06 Oct 2005 18:45:17 +0200
Organization:  <URL:http://purl.net/xyzzy>
Lines: 15
Sender: [email-masked]

Result of my experiment:

> my UA won't warn me that there's an interesting "Newsgroups:"
> in the mail
[...]
> and that's _bad_ => it has to be addressed in USEAGE if we
> sanction "Newsgroups:" as _mail_ header field.

Wrong, with Options -> Show headers -> Normal I do get a very
visible "Newsgroups: gmane.ietf.usenet.format" in my mail.

They really knew how to implement good UAs about 10 years ago,
"mozilla 3." rocks, it should get a honorary GNKSA. :-)  Bye

To: [email-masked]
From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Subject:  Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date:  Thu, 06 Oct 2005 18:12:20 +0200
Organization:  <URL:http://purl.net/xyzzy>
Lines: 55
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
 
> for those who are not interested in philosophical
> differences
[...]

The philosophical issues are quite interesting, but I also
want to see what my stoneage UA actually does:  from my POV
USEFOR is a "newsgroup", and my UA offers Re:News, Re:Mail,
and Re:Both.  I took the latter and added my own address
manually.

What I expect is that all get this article somehow via the
list, and we get it additionally as "private mail".  But my
UA won't warn me that there's an interesting "Newsgroups:"
in the mail or an interesting "To:" in the news (my POV as
GMaNe user), and that's _bad_ => it has to be addressed in
USEAGE if we sanction "Newsgroups:" as _mail_ header field.

The real problems:  If I get unsolicited courtesy copies,
reply by mail, but later I see that it was no private mail
but only a courtesy copy, then I'm seriously annoyed.

The opposite case, public reply to something that was only
a PM, would be worse, but an UA adding bogus "Newsgroups:"
header fields to mails is definitely broken.  It can still
happen in practice (user tries to post and mail, only one
of these attempts makes it), but then the user at least
_intended_ to post and won't be annoyed if quotes of his
pseudo-private mail show up in public, i.e. in a followup.

So for that case USEFOR should say that the _presence_ of
a "Newsgroups:" header field in mail always indicates the
_intention_ to post+mail.

Same idea as "Cc: list" for mail replies also sent to the
list.  Of course you could be lost to guess what an obscure
"Newsgroups: gmane.ietf.usenet.format" means, but that's a
special case, and normally I never send "courtesy copies" -
excl. Keith Moore because he wants this, and he learned how
to interpret this obscure "Newsgroups:" header field in his
mail => private problem of Keith, already solved. 

However the _absence_ of a "Newsgroups;" header field in
mail MUST NOT be interpreted as "not posted", many (?) UAs
won't use it.

Again the same idea as for mailing lists, the _absence_ of
"To: list" or "Cc: list" in a mail doesn't guarantee "not
posted" - for that purpose we'd use some very visible "off
list" in the body or in the subject.  And that could be
also stated in USEAGE.
                        Bye, Frank

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22674
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 14:02:44 GMT
Lines: 55
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> John Stanley <[email-masked]> writes:

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>>  If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>>  message has been posted to a newsgroup.

>Doesn't match reality. Some existing clients leave the header in
>email-only replies, some leave it out of the email side of dual-posted
>replies, and some only include it in true dual-posted replies. Even if
>you try to prohibit it now, it will still happen.

Exactly. Jacob raised this problem years ago. There are basically two
existing practices (one meaning that this email also sent to the given
newsgroup, and one meaning the opposite). That is an intolerable
situation, and the only sensible way to get out of it is to bless one of
the usages in the standard and deprecate the other. Yes, it will take some
while for the "wrong" usage to disappear, but leaving the meaning
undefined for ever would be even worse.

We decided to fix it that way years ago; I explained to Jacob what we were
doing, and he declared himself satisfied thereby.

>That's why Jacob (and I) were working on Posted-And-Mailed.

Yes, a Posted-And-Mailed header would be a fine tool to use in addition,
but we decided some while back not to include it in our present standard
(nor Mail-Copies-To).

BTW, Harald's full text, which you snipped, was:

   If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
   message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
   is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
   and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
   moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).

It is necessary to mention the special usage for moderators, but that last
bit is not quite right because then it does not indicate that the message
_has_ been posted to a newsgroup - rather that it (hopefully) will be. So
a better last bit would be:

   In addition, the Newsgroups header field has a special significance
   when sending email to a moderator [USEPRO].

-- 
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

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:19:38 -0400
From: "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

[snip]

> We make a standard. As John Klensin said near the start of the DRUMS work 
> that led to 2821/2822, "when practice exists, our standard should either 
> bless or curse it. Ignoring it is harmful". (quote is not exact. Too many 
> years ago.)
> 

Didn't your text ignore existing practice? Your text stated that the 
presense of a header field meant something. John politely replied that 
there is existing practice to insert the header field when it was not 
posted.  That had to be men

[snip]

> Hope this is better. You and I apparently have quite different opinions on 
> what the role of a standard is in the face of self-conflicting practice on 
> the Inernet.

When there is self-conflicting practice, the standard should mention 
the existence of practice that is widespread and not in conflict with
previous standards.

To me, that's part of the meaning of "particular attention to 
backwards compatibility" in the charter.

That makes your other statement a totally inappropriate guide for 
authoring a practical standard:

 > "If you claim to follow this standard, you will generate this
 > header under the folllowing circumstances, and you will interpret
 > this
 > header as if the following circumstances had been the reason for its
 > generation".

I've passed my limit of arguing that engineering is about crafting
real-world solutions.  That comes as a given in other IETF groups,
but has to be argued here.

Engineering standards are not position papers or descriptions of a
theoretical system that would work if EVERYONE conformed.

Practical standards cannot include text that leads implementors into 
making big blunders such as posting quoted text of private email.

Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:10:48 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: John Stanley <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

(header note - for those who are not interested in philosophical 
differences, there's a paragraph marked *** POSSIBLE WAY FORWARD *** at the 
end of the message.)

--On onsdag, oktober 05, 2005 15:19:47 -0700 John Stanley 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>
>> --On onsdag, oktober 05, 2005 12:08:54 -0700 John Stanley
>> <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> > Doesn't match reality. Some existing clients leave the header in
>> > email-only replies, some leave it out of the email side of dual-posted
>> > replies, and some only include it in true dual-posted replies. Even if
>> > you try to prohibit it now, it will still happen.
>>
>> So what?
>> Some clients won't be conformant with what we suggest.
>>
>> That's news?
>
> No, it isn't news. The 'so what' is that it is wrong to knowingly
> misconstrue the reality of the issue. The reality of the issue is that
> clients already exist that do not follow your rules for the use of the
> Newsgroups header, and we know they exist and will continue to do so. And
> they exist outside the scope of our standard. And our standard isn't
> supposed to be a suggestion, your proposed text made a clear statement
> about the meaning of a header field in an email message. A statement
> that is incorrect in many, if not most, cases.

I'm sorry - this is (going to be) a voluntary standard that people can 
claim conformance to.
I think the term "suggestion" is a quite apt description of its status.

In this case: "If you claim to follow this standard, you will generate this 
header under the folllowing circumstances, and you will interpret this 
header as if the following circumstances had been the reason for its 
generation".

> Just one simple example: if I am using an EMAIL client to read the output
> of a news to mail gateway and reply to the poster using email, I am
> operating in the email domain and follow email standards. Email standards
> do NOT define Newsgroups, and a proper email client ignores headers it
> does not know. The result is a message that you are trying to tell someone
> was posted to a certain newsgroup; the truth is it never was posted
> in news at all.

If you blindly copy headers you don't know the meaning of into the headers 
of your reply, your email reader is FOOBAR anyway. Do you also copy the 
Content-MD5 header and the Delivered-To header?

There is no standard anywhere that I know of that says "when replying, copy 
all unknown headers into the reply"; if you know of one in the IETF domain, 
please tell us, so that I can draft an urgent standards action to have it 
deprecated because it's truly, completely, utterly broken.

But I may have misunderstood your example.

> Your definition of that header in email leads to exactly the problem that
> I started out trying to solve with posted-and-mailed: someone gets an
> email with a Newsgroups header and either they or their client assumes
> that the content was posted to news, so they decide that following up in
> news is an appropriate venue, even though the email was sent privately.
> That results in the quoted parts of private email (sometimes the entire
> content) being posted publicly, and many people feel that that is a
> serious breach of netiquette.

Yes.
And this misunderstanding will continue to happen no matter what our 
standard specifies, too. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't take a position.

> You can say that Newsgroups appearing in email means something specific,
> but the truth is that it has no such meaning. It never has had a specific
> meaning, and back when we (not this group, the one working on a
> posted-and-mailed draft) discussed this there wasn't even a consensus
> that it WAS supposed to mean anything. My naive hope what that we could
> simply define it to mean just what you said it means. I was disabused of
> that hope pretty quickly. The split was about even between "this message
> WAS posted to this newsgroup" and "this message is an email reply to
> something posted to that newsgroup", with a small contingent of "this
> email message contains an undefined header that means nothing". At the
> time, two major newsreading systems (trn et.al and Pine) did things
> opposite ways. Whether Pine has changed behaviour or not I don't know; trn
> has not.

Could you please identify the group working on "posted-and-mailed" (which 
mailing list, and approximate timeframe, if it was an open group)?

> The only thing we can say about a Newsgroups header field appearing in
> email is that it is undefined (because that is what the email standards
> say). We can expand that somewhat and caution users against assuming that
> it means anything, but that's just saying "undefined" in more words.
> Replacement text has already been provided. Text that reflects the actual
> situation and how it will likely remain for quite some time to come.
>
> Do we document reality or not?

We make a standard. As John Klensin said near the start of the DRUMS work 
that led to 2821/2822, "when practice exists, our standard should either 
bless or curse it. Ignoring it is harmful". (quote is not exact. Too many 
years ago.)

In this case, we have two areas of application where the field clearly 
makes sense to include in email: Gatewayed news messages and messages 
forwarded to moderators.
(note that the semantics is subtly different: In the first case, the 
message has been posted *and distributed* in News; in the second case, the 
message has been posted but *not* distributed. I picked the term "posted" 
for a reason.)

*** POSSIBLE WAYS FORWARD ***

We can choose the same opt-out that we did for References, saying "other 
messages may use this header; that's OK", or we can say "other messages may 
use this header; that's broken and their problem".

Or we can revert to usefor-05 and ignore the issue.

*** END POSSIBLE WAYS FORWARD ***

> Do I get better than a "so what" sarcastic response next time, or is
> that the appropriate level of discussion for this group? I thought I was
> supposed to state calmly why I disagreed with something and provide
> alternative text, but when I do that, I get "that's news?"

Hope this is better. You and I apparently have quite different opinions on 
what the role of a standard is in the face of self-conflicting practice on 
the Inernet.

Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 15:19:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> --On onsdag, oktober 05, 2005 12:08:54 -0700 John Stanley 
> <[email-masked]> wrote:
> > Doesn't match reality. Some existing clients leave the header in
> > email-only replies, some leave it out of the email side of dual-posted
> > replies, and some only include it in true dual-posted replies. Even if
> > you try to prohibit it now, it will still happen.
> 
> So what?
> Some clients won't be conformant with what we suggest.
> 
> That's news?

No, it isn't news. The 'so what' is that it is wrong to knowingly
misconstrue the reality of the issue. The reality of the issue is that
clients already exist that do not follow your rules for the use of the
Newsgroups header, and we know they exist and will continue to do so. And
they exist outside the scope of our standard. And our standard isn't
supposed to be a suggestion, your proposed text made a clear statement
about the meaning of a header field in an email message. A statement
that is incorrect in many, if not most, cases.

Just one simple example: if I am using an EMAIL client to read the output
of a news to mail gateway and reply to the poster using email, I am 
operating in the email domain and follow email standards. Email standards
do NOT define Newsgroups, and a proper email client ignores headers it
does not know. The result is a message that you are trying to tell someone
was posted to a certain newsgroup; the truth is it never was posted 
in news at all. 

Your definition of that header in email leads to exactly the problem that
I started out trying to solve with posted-and-mailed: someone gets an
email with a Newsgroups header and either they or their client assumes
that the content was posted to news, so they decide that following up in
news is an appropriate venue, even though the email was sent privately.
That results in the quoted parts of private email (sometimes the entire
content) being posted publicly, and many people feel that that is a
serious breach of netiquette.

You can say that Newsgroups appearing in email means something specific,
but the truth is that it has no such meaning. It never has had a specific
meaning, and back when we (not this group, the one working on a
posted-and-mailed draft) discussed this there wasn't even a consensus 
that it WAS supposed to mean anything. My naive hope what that we could
simply define it to mean just what you said it means. I was disabused of
that hope pretty quickly. The split was about even between "this message
WAS posted to this newsgroup" and "this message is an email reply to
something posted to that newsgroup", with a small contingent of "this
email message contains an undefined header that means nothing". At the
time, two major newsreading systems (trn et.al and Pine) did things
opposite ways. Whether Pine has changed behaviour or not I don't know; trn
has not.

The only thing we can say about a Newsgroups header field appearing in
email is that it is undefined (because that is what the email standards
say). We can expand that somewhat and caution users against assuming that
it means anything, but that's just saying "undefined" in more words.
Replacement text has already been provided. Text that reflects the actual
situation and how it will likely remain for quite some time to come.

Do we document reality or not?

Do I get better than a "so what" sarcastic response next time, or is
that the appropriate level of discussion for this group? I thought I was
supposed to state calmly why I disagreed with something and provide
alternative text, but when I do that, I get "that's news?"

Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 23:16:49 +0100
To: [email-masked]
From: Richard Clayton <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

In message <[email-masked]>, John
Stanley <[email-masked]> writes

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>>I suggest instead adding to the end of the section, after the stuff on the 
>>non-permitted newsgroup names:
>
>>  If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>>  message has been posted to a newsgroup.
>
>Doesn't match reality. 

I agree with John here ... there's a wide range of existing use, so you
can conclude whatever you want when you see it. Trying to list some good
reasons for its meaning will raise expectations unwisely -- and any push
back to other (unendorsed) usage is very unlikely, because no email
software (that has any sense) is going to take any dramatic action upon
seeing it. The only sane thing for such software to examine when
deciding if the article is arriving in multiple media is Message-ID :(

However, there is some use (I assume, I've never dealt with incoming
email traffic as a moderator) in having the header in the email that
arrives for moderation. So the earlier text

  If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
  message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
  is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
  and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
  moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).

for which John suggests

>  If a Newsgroups: header field appears in email, its meaning is 
>  undefined. Some messaging clients leave the Newsgroups header field
>  in email-only replies to news messages; some leave the field only
>  in messages both posted to news and sent via email. It is impossible to
>  determine any useful information about the destination(s) of an
>  email message that contains the Newsgroups header field from that 
>  field, since that header field is undefined in email.

might be usefully reduced (with of course the addition of "field"), in
my opinion, to:

  If a Newsgroups: header field appears in email, its meaning is
  generally undefined. However, when a submitted article is emailed to a
  moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]) then the moderator is entitled
  to take note of the header as indicating the newsgroups for which the
  author is requesting it to be posted.

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 23:25:49 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: John Stanley <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

--On onsdag, oktober 05, 2005 12:08:54 -0700 John Stanley 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
>
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>> I suggest instead adding to the end of the section, after the stuff on
>> the  non-permitted newsgroup names:
>
>>  If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>>  message has been posted to a newsgroup.
>
> Doesn't match reality. Some existing clients leave the header in
> email-only replies, some leave it out of the email side of dual-posted
> replies, and some only include it in true dual-posted replies. Even if
> you try to prohibit it now, it will still happen.

So what?
Some clients won't be conformant with what we suggest.

That's news?

                  Harald

Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:08:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand <harald@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>I suggest instead adding to the end of the section, after the stuff on the 
>non-permitted newsgroup names:

>  If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
>  message has been posted to a newsgroup.

Doesn't match reality. Some existing clients leave the header in
email-only replies, some leave it out of the email side of dual-posted
replies, and some only include it in true dual-posted replies. Even if
you try to prohibit it now, it will still happen.

That's why Jacob (and I) were working on Posted-And-Mailed. That header
was supposed to be new and a unique indicator without the baggage of
existing usage.

  If a Newsgroups: header field appears in email, its meaning is 
  undefined. Some messaging clients leave the Newsgroups header field
  in email-only replies to news messages; some leave the field only
  in messages both posted to news and sent via email. It is impossible to
  determine any useful information about the destination(s) of an
  email message that contains the Newsgroups header field from that 
  field, since that header field is undefined in email.

Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 18:39:33 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Some stats on identifiers.....
Sender: [email-masked]

--On onsdag, oktober 05, 2005 12:57:55 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> 7592 different names
>> 2848 domain names - occur 7364712
>> 53 IPv4 addresses - occur 34377
>> 758 Fidonet addresses - occur 66665
>> 366 trailing POSTED - occur 194242
>> 168 trailing MISMATCH - occur 87192
>
> Which means that there are 168 well-used sites that ought to be sorting
> out the problem with their peers :-( .
>
>> 321 something else - occur 1503171
>
> That doesn't add up to 7592. I presume it means that there were 3246
> "barewords" not otherwise classifiable, but in that case what is
> "something else"?

3246 names occured 5 times or less. I forgot to count that.

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22667
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1052 Changes from RFC 2822
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:51:20 GMT
Lines: 32
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>--On fredag, september 30, 2005 13:58:18 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
><[email-masked]> wrote:

>> It might also be useful to mention (but not as a restriction, of course)
>> that MIME is fully incorporated, at least to the extent given in RFC 2049.

>It is not a difference between this specification and RFC 2822; using MIME 
>for a message is allowed in RFC 2822, and is not mandatory in the new 
>USEFOR article format either.

It is mandatory in the sense that USEFOR 2.3 says that user agents MUST
meet RFC 2049, at least and also RFC 2231, which is far stronger that RFC
2822. Which means that people can freely use it in their articles and
expect the rest of the world to make sense of it.

So the only issue was whether it should be documented as a change from RFC
2822 (which I grant you is not 100% essential).

>With that set of changes, I'm marking this as "text accepted".

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22668
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Some stats on identifiers.....
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:57:55 GMT
Lines: 39
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>another result of the wonderful log set I received.... a script run over 
>one million Path: headers gave:

>7592 different names
>2848 domain names - occur 7364712
>53 IPv4 addresses - occur 34377
>758 Fidonet addresses - occur 66665
>366 trailing POSTED - occur 194242
>168 trailing MISMATCH - occur 87192

Which means that there are 168 well-used sites that ought to be sorting
out the problem with their peers :-( .

>321 something else - occur 1503171

That doesn't add up to 7592. I presume it means that there were 3246
"barewords" not otherwise classifiable, but in that case what is
"something else"?

>Conclusion, sort of:

>There aren't that many non-domain-like names around.
>But those that are there are important.

Certainly those 3246 barewords are important, if my arithmetic is correct.

-- 
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

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22666
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: #1101 empty bodies
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:42:08 GMT
Lines: 21
Sender: [email-masked]

In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>Based on discussion:

>Resolving to "no change needed". There are empty bodies in the wild.
>USEAGE may warn that it's good practice not to generate them.

In the absence of being able to contact Henry to ask for more information
on why he chose to outlaw them in s-o-1036, I think that resolution is
sound.

-- 
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

Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:53:32 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: #1078 3.1.5 Newsgroup header in email
Sender: [email-masked]

I don't like the way Charles' suggested text sits in the paragraph.

He suggests that the paragarph start:

3.1.5  Newsgroups

   The Newsgroups header field specifies the newsgroup(s) to which the
   article is posted. It MAY be used in an Email message to
 indicate that it was also posted as an article to those newsgroups,
 but SHOULD NOT be used in Email for any other purpose (such as an
 email-only reply to a News article). Exceptionally, it can also
 appear in an article emailed to a moderator (see [USEPRO]).

This seems to put the email stuff up front. And I think it could be simpler 
without using 2119 language.

I suggest instead adding to the end of the section, after the stuff on the 
non-permitted newsgroup names:

   If a Newsgroups: header appears in email, it indicates that the
   message has been posted to a newsgroup. This can happen if a newsgroup
   is gatewayed into email, if a message is sent out both through email
   and through Netnews, or if a submitted article is emailed to a
   moderator for approval (see [USEPRO]).

Makes sense?

Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 00:14:38 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: #1101 empty bodies
Sender: [email-masked]

Based on discussion:

Resolving to "no change needed". There are empty bodies in the wild.
USEAGE may warn that it's good practice not to generate them.

Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 22:42:44 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Some stats on identifiers.....
Sender: [email-masked]

another result of the wonderful log set I received.... a script run over 
one million Path: headers gave:

7592 different names
2848 domain names - occur 7364712
53 IPv4 addresses - occur 34377
758 Fidonet addresses - occur 66665
366 trailing POSTED - occur 194242
168 trailing MISMATCH - occur 87192
321 something else - occur 1503171

Of 2848 domain-like names, 2182 had an A record
751 had an MX record, and 751 had both

666 had neither.

(In order to get these numbers, I had to do some tricks, for instance 
dropping anything after POSTED in the path, whether that was alone or 
within a "hostname.POSTED" - because at least one site injected a seemingly 
random hex number into the path after the POSTED... I also dropped all 
names occuring 5 or fewer times, for the same reason.)

Conclusion, sort of:

There aren't that many non-domain-like names around.
But those that are there are important.

                       Harald

Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 20:49:08 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Resolving tickets #1003, 1029
Sender: [email-masked]

Having had no comments on my message of Sept 29, I'm calling these two 
tickets "text accepted" and "no change needed", respectively.

With that, only #1047 is left of the pre-05 tickets.

                    Harald

Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 20:46:55 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1046 Security considerations for boundaries - text proposed
Sender: [email-masked]

--On fredag, september 30, 2005 13:29:14 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> A somewhat different rewrite from Frank's suggested text, to be appended
>> to  section 5:
>
>> MIME security considerations are discussed in [RFC2046].
>> Note that the full range of encodings allowed for parameters in
>> [RFC2046] and [RFC2231] permits constructs that simple parsers will parse
>> correctly; examples of hard-to-parse constructs are:
>
> ITYM "that simple parsers might fail to parse correctly".

Good catch (I missed a "not", but your text is better). Text updated.

Status changed to "text accepted".

Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 20:42:34 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1052 Changes from RFC 2822
Sender: [email-masked]

--On fredag, september 30, 2005 13:58:18 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Updated text:
>
>> Appendix C.  Differences from RFC 2822
>
>>   This appendix lists the differences between the syntax allowed by the
>>   Netnews Article Format (this document) as compared to the Internet
>>   Message Format, specifically [RFC2822].
>                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 		  as specified in
>
> That ensures that we do not actually take a position one way or the other
> on the religious question of whether there is such a thing as "THE
> Internet Message Format" (some read RFC 2822 as specifying there is;
> others read it as applying only within the framework of "electronic
> mail").

Accepted (don't buy the reasoning, but suggestion makes the text clearer).

>
>>   The Netnews article format is a strict subset of the Internet Message
>>   Format; all Netnews articles conform to the syntax of [RFC2822].
>
>>   The following restrictions are important:
>
>>      A SP (space) is REQUIRED after the colon (':') following header
>                                                                ^
>                                                                a
>>      field name.
>
>>      A more restricted syntax of msg-id (to be used by the Message-ID,
>                                    ^^^^^^
>                                   <msg-id>
>>      References, and Supersedes header fields) is defined.
>
>>      The length of a msg-id MUST NOT exceed 250 octets.
>                        ^^^^^^
>                       <msg-id>
>
>>      Comments are not allowed in the Message-ID header field.
>
>>      The CFWS between msg-ids in the References header field is not
>                         ^^^^^^^
>                        <msg-ids>
>>      optional.
>
>>      It is legal for a parser to not accept obsolete syntax, except
>>      that:
>
>>         The <obs-phrase> construct MUST be accepted.
>
>>         The obsolete timezone "GMT" MUST be accepted in the Date header
>                        ^^^^^^^^                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                         <zone>                       within a <date-time>
>>         field.
>           ^^^^^
>
> [Because the same applies also to the Injection-Date and Expires header
> fields.]

Accepted.

>
>>      Every line of a header field body (including the first and any
>>      that are subsequently folded) MUST contain at least one non-
>>      whitespace character. This means that an empty header is illegal.
>
> It might be helpful to add "(consequently, the syntax of <unstructured> is
> changed)" [or "now requires at least one character" or somesuch].
>
> The only item you have not included is something on the lines of:
>
>        There is no RECOMMENDED limit of 78 characters in a header line.
>
> [We decided this was a matter of best practice - hence there are advisory
> limits in USEAGE].

Yep. I'm still not including it.

> It might also be useful to mention (but not as a restriction, of course)
> that MIME is fully incorporated, at least to the extent given in RFC 2049.

It is not a difference between this specification and RFC 2822; using MIME 
for a message is allowed in RFC 2822, and is not mandatory in the new 
USEFOR article format either.

With that set of changes, I'm marking this as "text accepted".

Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 20:31:38 +0200
From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Subject: Re: #1053 2.1 Relationship to 2822 - revised text
Sender: [email-masked]

--On fredag, september 30, 2005 13:26:46 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> Articles are conformant if they use the "GMT" timezone, as specified
>                                                 ^^^^^^^^
>                                                  <zone>
>> in section 3.1.2.

OK.

>
> If those two paragraphs starting "Articles are ..." were moved two
> paragraphs higher, it would be clearer, and the wording could be
> simplified slightly ("following" rather than "mentioned below").

OK (judgment call, but I'll go along).

With that, I'm declaring the ticket "text accepted".

To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22657
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Paging Henry Spencer
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 17:02:33 GMT
Lines: 15
Sender: [email-masked]

Has anybody had recent contact with Henry? His last known mail address on
this list was [email-masked]. The only mail exchanger for
spsystems.net is spsystems.net which has IP address 216.126.83.115. But it
is not pingable, and does not respond on port 25.

-- 
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