Re: User-Agent header

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Bill Wohler writes:

 > And until this draft is promoted to RFC status,

Never gonna happen.  It would be sacrilege.<wink>  I note that the
draft expired 7 months ago, although it's still in the editor's queue.

 > MH-E is still using X-Mailer (although we could update the format
 > of the header field to conform with this draft).

That's the right thing to do for a mail-only MUA, IMO.

 > Assuming this draft applies to mail header fields.

It doesn't.  It applies to netnews.  It is the devout wish of the
newsies that mail agents adopt their practices too, but they've often
failed in that (cf mail-followup-to).

And the spec of User-Agent is mildly broken in any case, as it permits
characters that RFC 2616 doesn't (the braces "{" and "}").

 > The draft refers to Usenet header fields in the "context" of RFCs 2822
 > and 2045; does that imply that this document "extends" RFCs 2822 and
 > 2045?

Not in the sense that it would impose or imply new practices for
mail-only agents, nor justify Gnus users' practice of inserting
news-only headers in mail messages and expecting them to operate as
they do in news.  It means that it is a conforming implementation of
those RFCs (and in fact is a substantial restriction of them in
several ways).