Subject: Re: #1132: Allowing IP addresses as path-identiites - Poll result

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 10:59:05 -0700 (PDT)

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>[2nd version of syntax, making <source-identity>s readily
>distinguishable from <path-identity>s.]

>   path-identity = dot-atom-text / bareword

>   source-identity = dot-atom-text / IP-address / bareword

How is one "dot-atom-text" readily distinguishable from any other?

>      NOTE: An <IPv6address> is the only place where a ":" can occur
>      within a <path-entry>. Since some current news-servers may treat
>      ":" as a delimiter (in addition to the customary "!"), it is
>      inadvisable for any <bareword> to be composed only from
>      hexadecimal digits.

Since we can solve this problem TRIVIALLY, why are we still pretending 
we cannot? Can someone please explain why we ought not use a simple 
solution and prevent this problem altogether?

>All the diagnostic <path-source>s are immediately distinguishable from the
><path-identity>s by the presence of a big uppercase keyword.
 
Allow me to point out again how ... silly ... this is, to pretend that we 
cannot have an IP literal as a path-identity, so we define a new kind of 
thing to allow IP literals to appear in exactly the same places we say 
they cannot appear when they are called path-identities.