Subject: Whitespace in Message Identifiers

From: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 10:29:18 +0000 (GMT)

A problem has arisen with the present systax of msg-id, insofar as,
whilst apparently not permitting whitespace, it does allow a quoted-pair
on either side of the '@'. And, as has now been pointed out, a quoted
pair can be '\ '.

Whilst this is not a problem for mail, it could be a severe problem for
Netnews, and it is highly desirable that msg-id syntax be identical
in the two, so that gatewayed articles can continue to use the same
Message-ID. Quoting from a recent article to the USEFOR mailing list:

From: Andrew Gierth <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 18:00:53 GMT
Subject: Re: RFC 1036 Revision: Mandatory Headers

>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]> writes:
 
 Charles> But, on a further point, what harm would actually ensue from
 Charles> a '\ ' in the middle of a message-id?
 
Whitespace in message-ids causes lots of things to break spectacularly.
 
Consider what happens when parsing an NNTP command for example.
 
There is no room for maneuver on this: whitespace in message-ids MUST
be absolutely forbidden in our standard, as it is known to cause
failure to interoperate.

Can I therefore request that the possibility of quoted-pair be removed
from both places in the syntax of msg-id before the draft escapes from
IESG. I have had indications from Pete that he would not be unhappy to
do this.

Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     [email-masked]  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      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

---

From: Jacob Palme <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 21:00:12 +0100

> Message-ID. Quoting from a recent article to the USEFOR mailing list:

Message-ID is based on the e-mail address format. So if
spaces are allowed in e-mail addresses, they should be
allowed also in Message-IDs. Message-ID is often generated
by combining some additional string with an e-mail address.

So if a person has the e-mail address
"John Smith"@foo.bar

the there is a need for a Message-ID like
"20000223205537*John Smith"@foo.bar

I have argued in DRUMS that we should outlaw all quoted
characters in e-mail addresses, since they are known to
cause problems with many existing mail systems. But this
was not accepted by DRUMS.
-- 
Jacob Palme <[email-masked]> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/