Re: [nmh-workers] Flagging messages

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Sun, 26 May 2019 21:39:00 -0400
    From:        Ken Hornstein <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | Comments and white space, sadly, are still allowed in all sorts of
  | crazy places using the "Obsolete" syntax as of RFC 5322.

They should be recognised.   But generating that stuff has been
incorrect since 2822, which has to be close to 20 years ago
(if not more than that).

I kind of suspect that most things which generated any of that
have long perished (most of it was very rare, even in true 822
days - generally only from pedants, not from software).

I doubt anyone is going to care now if software stops processing
all of the obs-xxx syntax elements - about the only possible use
left is to handle ancient e-mail archives, on the assumption that
there are any still around which contain any of that stuff (it was
made obsolete because it was horrid, but also required that no-one
knew of anything active (back then) which actually used it).

  |    In the obsolete syntax, any amount of folding white space MAY be
  |    inserted where the obs-FWS rule is allowed.

Yes, I'd forgotton that one.   Having lines which contain just spaces
legal, and meaning something different than an empty line, played havoc
on systems that did e-mail using fixed length space padded records.
Assuming that there actually were any - they were rumored to exist,
but I don't reall ever talking to someone who had first hand experience
of such a thing.

kre