Subject: utext

From: Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 21:00:46 +0000 (GMT)

Can somebody please explain what has been gained by introducing <utext>
for unstructureds in the new draft. We now have

utext           =       NO-WS-CTL /     ; Non white space controls
                        %d33-126 /      ; The rest of US-ASCII
                        obs-utext

which seems to be saying on the face of it that the DEL character is
excluded in unstructureds. Fair enough, except that it still gets in
because NO-WS-CTL happens to include %d127. The same situation seems to
arise with ctext, qtext, and dtext, but NOT with ftext.

Bug or feature?

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: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2000 15:57:34 +1100

Date:        Thu, 3 Feb 2000 21:00:46 +0000 (GMT)
    From:        Charles Lindsey <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Can somebody please explain what has been gained by introducing <utext>
  | for unstructureds in the new draft.

I won't comment on that, or not much, as I didn't write the grammar,
and some of this is just an issue of grammar writing style.

  | Fair enough, except that it still gets in
  | because NO-WS-CTL happens to include %d127.

That's right, all 7 bit ascii characters (other than nul) are included
in unstructured.  My guess is that the particular form is just to emphasise
in the grammar that folding is legal wherever white space appears, hence
the use of NO-WS-CTL to explicitly exclude space and tab, which are then
added back via FWS in unstructured.   The effect woudl be no different if
white space was allowed in utext, except any space that was included
that way would appear to not allow folding.   That's all just an artifact
of the way parsing happens though.

  | The same situation seems to
  | arise with ctext, qtext, and dtext, but NOT with ftext.

All of those allow arbitrary 7 bit ascii - except field names, that have
to be printable.

  | Bug or feature?

Just style.

kre

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 11:38:17 -0600

>and some of this is just an issue of grammar writing style.

Yup. Robert got it exactly right. It was to make clear that WS is 
foldable in unstructured.

Everything else he said was right on the money as well.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
Eudora Engineering - QUALCOMM Incorporated
Ph: (217)337-6377 or (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102