[Email-SIG] fixing the current email module

[Barry Warsaw]

On Oct 8, 2009, at 3:06 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Bill Janssen writes:
>
>> I should point out that I also store lots of metadata in the  
>> registered
>> MIME format text/rfc822-headers (defined in RFC 1892), data that  
>> doesn't
>> necessarily conform to the specific set of headers mentioned in  
>> RFC822.
>> It would be nice if the header support in the email package would  
>> also
>> support reading and writing that format.
>
> I'm not sure what you're saying here.  RFC 822 is inclusive.  More or
> less, if it looks like a header, it is a header, and we need to parse
> it at least into field name and field body, whether RFC 822 defines
> more specific syntax for it or not.

The way I read it was that certain RFC 5322 requirements should be  
relaxed in certain cases, e.g. line length limits.  If you're mutating  
the model, you wouldn't necessarily (ever? always?) throw an exception  
for long lines.

> Is that all, or do you mean you want it to give that MIME format
> special treatment, such as a method for converting a Message object
> containing a parsed RFC 822 message to a Message object containing a
> multipart/report message and a text/rfc822-headers subobject, ready to
> have the text/plain and message/delivery-status parts filled in per
> RFC 1892?
>
>> And MIME multipart is sometimes used in applications other than  
>> email.
>> It would be nice if the MIME parsing part of the email module could  
>> be
>> used for those purposes, as well -- basically without some of the
>> headers defined in 2822 and 2821.
>
> Ditto, here.
>
> I would expect that you could feed an HTTP stream containing headers
> and content to the Message constructor and get something sensible
> back.  Dunno what Barry thinks of that, though.

I think the Python community would expect the email package to support  
this and similar use cases.

-Barry

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 832 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/email-sig/attachments/20091008/1ec02c7d/attachment-0001.pgp>