Re: Message fragmentation via message/partial and news-specific header fields

Russ Allbery wrote:
> Bruce Lilly <blilly <at> erols.com> writes:
> 
>>Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> 
>>>Is there really any point in talking about this in our drafts?
> 
> 
>>Yes, for the same reason that the issue was addressed in RFC 3798 (and
>>2298 before it).
> 
> 
> What was that reason?  I'm not familiar with either of those RFCs.
> 
> 
>>1. Message/partial fragmentation has already been used on Usenet.
>>2. Fragmented messages via message/partial may appear at mail-to-news
>>   gateways.
>>3a. Message/partial is, AFAIK, the only standardized method for
>>   message fragmentation and reassembly.  And since it is part of
>>   MIME, it is widely applicable (e.g. to HTTP as well as Internet
>>   Message Format).
>>3b. If there is some other method of fragmentation/reassembly, the same
>>   sort of issues need to be discussed
> 
> 
> This is all nice and good and my point is that message fragmentation is
> something that's only useful on Usenet for binary messages and 99.99% of
> the binary posters are never going to use it based on the *extensive*
> discussions that have been had with the authors of that software and with
> news administrators on news.software.nntp.
> 
> So while this might be useful to someone, it is an extreme edge case and
> one with which we have little to no implementation experience, which makes
> me doubt in the extreme that this working group is going to be able to do
> an adequate job of handling the problem.
> 
> 
>>>There have been extensive discussions in news.software.nntp about this
>>>and the outcome was quite clear.
> 
> 
>>Clear to whom and from what perspective?  Since the discussion didn't
>>take place here, can you summarize the discussion or point to an
>>archived summary?
> 
> 
> As mentioned above, the outcome of the discussion was a complete and utter
> lack of interest in anything MIME-related for message fragmentation,
> despite several of us pushing it pretty hard.  What is being used is not
> something that we can or should standardize.
> 
Hell, yENC is even standardized in practice, about 20% of all postings I 
am asked to exampne for inappropriate content defy any decode to which I 
have access. If there's one for UNIXen which will handle these posts, 
which don't follow the "standard" at yenc.org, I haven't found it.

People will do what they choose, and to date they choose hacks.

--

-- 
    -bill davidsen (davidsen <at> tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
  last possible moment - but no longer"  -me