RE: This WG in context of RFC 2277

[Patrik Fältström <paf@swip.net>]

--On 2000-01-27 10.23 -0800, Andrew Draper <ADRAPER@altera.com> wrote:

> SMTP: Domain names appear in commands and responses throughout.  Not
> assumed to be 8-bit clean.
> 
> HTTP: Domain names appear in various headers.  I think it's guaranteed to
> be 8-bit clean.  Many clients and servers are not expecting non-ASCII
> characters.

If I remember correctly from the days we did MIME (some years ago) we had a
loooooong discussion about the differences between 8-bit clean and binary,
and what implications that has on a text-based protocol.

Both SMTP and HTTP are text-based, and use certain octets as delimiters
between the "lines" (such as CR/LF combinations). If those octets are
included as part of the data one want to pass one of those lines, one might
end up in trouble if no quoting mechanism exists, and if it does, is the
protocol 8-bit clean? I.e. one have to be extremely precise when talking
about whether the octets on the wire can be all values 0-255 or if the
payload can be 0-255 (and because of that maybe encoded before passed on
the wire).

I am tired after travelling all day, so what I wrote above is probably not
as precise as it should be, but my message is hopefully clear:

When talking about whether something is "binary", "8-bit clean" etc be
extremely careful so we don't get debates in this mailing list as we did
some years ago.

    paf