Date:	Wed, 28 Jun 1995 17:44:06 +0900 (JST)
From:	"Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull AT turnbull DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To:	"John E. Davis" <davis AT space DOT mit DOT edu>
Cc:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject:	Re: Illegal Headers from mailing list (Re: graphics drivers)

On 26 Jun 1995, John E. Davis wrote:

> In article <DAs85v DOT BAw AT jade DOT mv DOT net>, AE DOT Dusoir AT ulst DOT ac DOT uk wrote:
> [Misc. headers]
>  : Dj-Gateway: from mailing list djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
> 
> I believe that the Dj-Gateway header is illegal and should be changed to
> something like X-Dj-Gateway.

This is possible, but please cite your authority.  According to RFC 1036 
(on Usenet news), sec 2.0:

"Any unrecognized headers are allowed, and will be passed through 
 unchanged."

Has Son-of-1036 been canonized already?  I haven't been paying attention. 
If not, though, news don't care.  (Last time I looked a SO1036 this hadn't
changed, anyway.)  News itself is subject to RFC 822 on messaging systems,
which says (sec 4.7.5): 

"Individual users of network mail are free to define and use additional 
 header fields.  Such fields must have names which are not already used.  
 ... Due to the nature of the extension-field publishing process, the name 
 of a user-defined field may be preempted.

 Note:  The prefatory string "X-" will never be used in the names of
 Extension-fields.  This provides user-defined fields with a protected set
 of names."

Ie, the "X-" mechanism is for safety; it is not required.  I think it 
unlikely that "Dj-" names will suffer from collisions.

Caveat:  I am not up-to-date on the RFC process; these (1036 and 822) may
have been obsoleted by now.  (I haven't heard of any revision of 822,
FWIW.)

Steve

- Raw text -