Re: [gentoo-user] new mail protocol rfc (was Re: tips on running a mail server in a cheap vps provider run but not-so-trusty admins?)

[Grant Taylor]

On 8/27/20 11:55 AM, Ashley Dixon wrote:
> Well said; thanks for the correction.

Of course.  My intention is to positively contribute to and learn from 
the community.

> Mathematical notation can be seen  as  a tightly coupled analogue
> to  this  sort  of  typesetting: the  same  book  that introduced
> Algebraic expressions (Cossike numbers) and  the  equals  sign  ('=')
> into  the  English-speaking world  also  suggested  the   use   of
> the   word "zenzizenizenike" to represent `x^8` [1].  Solid ideas
> will stick due to, as you said, their own merits; the form of the
> representation is  generally redundant.
>
> Nevertheless, as xkcd so brilliantly explains, TeX inspires  a  level
> of  blind trust in the content of a document [2]. As long as you avoid
> proposing standards in the form of an animated GIF, you're probably
> going to be OK. ;-)

I wonder if this is a side effect of the fact that TeX / LaTeX is a 
difficult markup language to work in and takes considerably more time 
and effort than simple text.  As such, there is a good chance that the 
idea that someone takes the time to express in (La)TeX is probably more 
completely thought out than simple text.  After all, why would someone 
spend the time and exert the effort to finely polish a half baked idea 
in (La)TeX?

Disclaimer:  I'm speaking in general and do not mean to imply anything 
towards Caveman's efforts.  It takes gumption to go against the status quo.

> I concur, but this was about the reference implementation.

Do you mean reference as opposed to initial.  Meaning that the reference 
implementation has had some time to grow and evolve and be optimized.

Fair enough.

> It would be impossible to make the initial implementation the crème
> de la  crème of all implementations, unless the protocol was never
> intended to expand.

With what little I know about statistics, I think that there is a very 
small but still greater than zero percent chance of it happening.  It's 
just *EXTREMELY* unlikely.  ;-)

> We do see some reference implementations  being used  as  the  de
> facto  choice  for supporting many standards, such as Apache Tomcat
> as the  ref.   imp.   for  Java Servlets, but as the name would
> suggest,  reference  implementations  are  only intended to be used
> as a reference  to  developers  of  future  implementations.

I don't think anything precludes the use of the reference implementation.

Given that things grow and evolve, I think it means that the reference 
implementation needs to be used /somewhere/ for the people maintaining 
it to gain experience and knowledge germane to said reference 
implementation.  Granted, this can be a small subset and does not need 
to be on the front lines.

> Moreover, these ridiculous restrictions only encourage  various
> implementations to deviate from the standard, adding  their
> own  non-standard  extensions  like "HillaryMail HTML support".
> Implementation developers are always going  to  add stupid things to
> their software (just look at  the  GNU  `typeof`  introspection mess),
> but  the  standard  text  itself  should  certainly  not  encourage
> such behaviour.

Indeed.

I also think that it's important to keep in mind that sometimes there 
are external limitations that dictate what can and can not be done. 
Like the fact that communications circuits were not guaranteed to be 
8-bit clean when email (RFC 822 and what predates it) and SMTP (RFC 821 
and what predates it).  It's not any more fair to blame the authors of 
RFC 821 for not supporting 8-bit than it is to blame Sir Tim Burners-Lee 
for not including encryption when he developed HTML and HTTP.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die