Re: Exaggerated use of Face and X-Face

[Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de>]

On Thu, Apr 22 2004, Wes Hardaker wrote:

>>>>>> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Reiner Steib <4.uce.03.r.s@nurfuerspam.de> said:
>
> Reiner> Don't you think that using four (X-)Face headers is a bit too much?
> Reiner> Personally, I don't care too much about it, but some people already
> Reiner> complain about Gnus users with a single Face (or even X-Face) header.
>
> Sigh.  Mail readers really should ignore unknown headers by default.

At least for news (I'm not sure about mail):

,----[ rfc1036.txt ]
|     Certain headers are required, and certain other headers are
|     optional.  Any unrecognized headers are allowed, and will be passed
|     through unchanged.  [...]
`----

> However, I've had to turn off my Face header for everything but this
> mailing list because people asked me to stop putting it in there
> (including my boss and my parents).

In which way did it annoy them?

The usual arguments in Usenet [1] are bandwidth and that people claim
that "Face:" should begin with "X-" (experimental header).  Yes, I
know Lars position about this:

,----[ <news:m3of6lmq9a.fsf@quimbies.gnus.org> ]
| > I thought it was against some RFC (or at least against some
| > convention), to have non-standard headers without the "X-" prefix.
| 
| Yes, that's true, but I intend Face to become a standard header.  :-)
`----

Maybe Lars refers to the last item here:

,----[ draft-ietf-usefor-article-11.txt ]
| 4.2.1.  Naming of Headers
| 
|    [...]
|    Whilst relaying agents MUST accept, and pass on unaltered, any non-
|    variant header whose header-name is syntactically correct, and
|    reading agents MUST enable them to be displayed, at least optionally,
|    posting and injecting agents SHOULD NOT generate headers other than
|      o headers established by this standard or any extension to it;
|      o those recognized by other IETF-established standards, notably the
|        Email standard [RFC 2822] and its extensions, excluding any
|        explicitly deprecated for Netnews (e.g. see section 9.2.1 for the
|        deprecated Disposition-Notification-To-header); or,
|        alternatively, those listed in some future IANA registry of
|        recognized headers;
|      o experimental headers beginning with "X-" (as defined in 4.2.5.1);
|      o on a provisional basis only, headers related to new protocols
|        under development which are the subject of (or intended to be the
|        subject of) some IETF-approved RFC (whether Informational,
|        Experimental or Standards-Track).
`----

(I'm not sure that these references are the most recent standards.)

Concerning "bandwidth": Someone in gnu.emacs.gnus wrote that a French
ISP planned to ban "Face" headers.  See the Thread before
<news:v9d68jxsfp.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de>.

Bye, Reiner.

[1] See e.g. the thread around
    <news:v9lloj1g8k.fsf@marauder.physik.uni-ulm.de> in
    de.comm.software.newsreader (in German).
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- PGP key available via WWW   http://rsteib.home.pages.de/