Subject: Re: Last Call: Message Disposition Notification to Draft Standard

From: Graham Klyne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 10:16:45 +0000

At 05:46 PM 1/18/02 -0500, The IESG wrote:

>The IESG has received a request to consider Message Disposition
>Notification <draft-vaudreuil-mdnbis-01.txt> as a Draft Standard,
>obsoleting RFC2298, currently a Proposed Standard.

My apologies for this late comment...

[[[
   2.2 The Disposition-Notification-Options Header

      Future extensions to this specification may require that information
      be supplied to the recipient's MUA for additional control over how and
      what MDNs are generated.  The Disposition-Notification-Options header
      provides an extensible mechanism for such information.  The syntax of
      this header is

        Disposition-Notification-Options =
                  "Disposition-Notification-Options" ":"
                                 disposition-notification-parameters

        disposition-notification-parameters = parameter *(";" parameter)

        parameter = attribute "=" importance "," value *("," value)

        importance = "required" / "optional"
]]]

The syntax of "parameter" requires that a value always be present, even 
when none is needed.  I have been involved in the design of MDN extensions 
for which it has been necessary to "invent" a dummy value to satisfy the 
syntax; e.g.

[[[
      Disposition-Notification-Options:
          Alternative-not-available=required,(TRUE)
]]]

Here, the value '(TRUE)' is a dummy that serves no purpose other than to 
satisfy the above syntax.

An alternative syntax might be:

[[[
        parameter = attribute "=" importance *("," value)
]]]

in which case the above example might be:

[[[
      Disposition-Notification-Options:
          Alternative-not-available=required
]]]

#g

------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Klyne                    Baltimore Technologies
Strategic Research              Content Security Group
<[email-masked]>    <http://www.mimesweeper.com>
                                 <http://www.baltimore.com>
------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Vaudreuil, Greg M (Greg)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 18:36:42 -0700

I am glad to hear of your experience.  At the time of the last-call, I was
unaware of any DSN extensions.  I know of no implmentations that this would
negatively affect.  

At the time of the last-call, I was unaware of any DSN extensions or known
problems with the syntax.  I have no objections to this change.

Greg V.

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Klyne [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 4:17 AM
To: Vaudreuil, Greg M (Greg); [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Last Call: Message Disposition Notification to Draft
Standard

[[[

[[[

[[[

[[[

#g