ietf-nntp HDR

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20020107094850.GK38062 at finch-staff-1.demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>Now, since 2822 allows a header name to include *any* ASCII character
>except space and colon, and since we don't want to rely on UTF-8 for
>primary syntax, the only way to separate out the two namespaces is to use
>colons in some way.

USEFOR allows only ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" (following son-of-1036 IIRC).
However, it also says software SHOULD tolerate everything 2822 allows, so
it comes to the same thing.

> The three obvious cases are:
>(1) no colon
>(2) leading colon
>(3) trailing colon

(4) colon anywhere (including the middle).

>It would be nice to use (1) for metadata and (3) for headers, but
>unfortunately existing practice is to use (1) for headers. Using (3) for
>metadata would be perverse, which leaves only (2).

Since I now see that my "line.count" and "byte.count" won't work (see
above), I would therefore suggest "line:count" and "byte:count". I think
these look better than a colon at the beginning. A colon at the end would
get confused with the usual colon following a header-name, so is better
avoided.


>(A) Should OVER/HDR be allowed to return metadata ?

Yes, with a colon anywhere, but in the middle for all the cases we
actually provide in the document.

>(B) If no, how do we address existing practice for OVER and the Lines
>situation for HDR ?

"Lines" must return the genuine Lines header from the article, if present,
(for any user stupid enough to believe it), or it will return the
response "sorry, we only do OVERVIEW.FMT headers".

>(c) If yes, how do we distinguish headers and metadata in HDR ?

With that colon.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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