Subject: Re: iCalendar - "octets" question

From: Alan Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2001 12:10:43 -0500

What is the purpose of adding folding?

If it's for human legibility of the iCalendar source, then folding
between characters would make more sense than between octets.

If folding is just for preventing absurdly long lines which some
machines may not like, then folding between octets might make more
sense.

RFC 2445 states that folding should be added between characters of
course. Is it OK to change this because it allows a certain parser
implementation strategy to work?

Of course, folding is only a "SHOULD"; are multibyte characters
one of the "valid reasons in particular circumstances" [RFC2119]
for not adding folding. By not folding, the sender can be sure that
the text will not be misinterpreted, whether the receiving parser
follows the spec or not.

--Alan

At 10:14 AM 03/12/2001 -0500, John Stracke wrote:
>Why? Characters (human legibility) are what matter for presentation, not
>octets.
>
>/=================================================================\
>|John Stracke                   |Principal Engineer               |
>[email-masked]  |Incentive Systems, Inc.          |
>|http://www.incentivesystems.com|My opinions are my own.          |
>|=================================================================|
>|"Lollygaggers will be shot on sight!" "I didn't say that!" "I was|
>|paraphrasing."                                                   |
>\=================================================================/

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From: "Shannon J. Clark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 11:37:33 -0600

Alan,

I think this raises one of the core questions:

How does the receiving system determine if folding has been done?

UNFOLDING is a MUST - so all systems have to perform it prior to dealing
with the iCalendar objects - one of the issues with Multibyte strings is the
possibility that "inside" of a character will be the sequence of octets that
is CRLF [Tab or Space].

So - while FOLDING is optional, not folding on a multibyte character object
may not solve our problems... it is quite possible that another system
receiving that iCalendar object would decide to "unfold" it - IF this
occurred BEFORE dealing with CHARSET - if FOLDING is required to deal with
OCTETS - then it is very logical to consider it as having to occur PRIOR to
character detection (logical but probably wrong).

Shannon

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked]
[mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of Alan Davies
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2001 11:11 AM
To: John Stracke; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: iCalendar - "octets" question

--Alan

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2001 14:03:33 -0700

> machines may not like, then folding between octets might make more

But makes unfolding - a guess if you don't know the charset.

> implementation strategy to work?

That was because iCalendar objects can be sent via email,
and email (821 or 822) specifies folding?

> for not adding folding.

Fold between characters - not at octets.