Subject: PROPOSAL: #111 (Use of TEXT)

From: Mark Nottingham <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:32:02 -0800

Based on list discussion as well as that in Dublin, I believe we're at  
this point WRT issue #111 <http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/ticket/111 
 >;

The plan is to remove the TEXT rule (and associated commentary)  
altogether, and replace it with instances that call out the specific  
legal octets and how to interpret them.

They are;

1) field-content (p1)

---8<---

   field-content = *( VCHAR / WSP / obs-text )
   obs-text = %x80-FF

Historically, HTTP has allowed field-content with text in the  
ISO-8859-1 charset (allowing other charsets through use of RFC2047  
encoding). In practice, most HTTP header field-values are a subset of  
the ASCII charset, and newly defined headers SHOULD constrain their  
field-values to ASCII characters. Recipients SHOULD treat obs-text  
characters in header field-content as raw octets.
--->8---

2) comment (p1)

---8<---
ctext = *( OWS / %x21-27 / %x2A-7E / obs-text )
--->8---

Note that OWS is Optional White Space, like LWS (work in progress).

3) quoted-string

---8<---
qdtext = *( OWS / %x21 / %x23-5B / %x5D-7E / obs-text )
--->8---

4) reason-phrase (p1/p2)

---8<---
Reason-Phrase = *( VCHAR / WSP / obs-text )
--->8---

Note that this also resolves the editorial issue #94 (Reason-Phrase  
BNF).

--
Mark Nottingham     http://www.mnot.net/