RFC 4823, "FTP Transport for Secure Peer-to-Peer Business Data Interchange over the Internet", April 2007

Errata ID: 2284
Status: Verified
Type: Technical
Publication Format(s) : TEXT
Reported By: Alfred Hoenes
Date Reported: 2007-05-14
Verifier Name: Alexey Melnikov
Date Verified: 2010-07-15

Section 7.4.1 says:

   The AS3-MDN follows the MDN specification [6] except where noted in
   this section.  The modified entity definitions in this document use
   the vertical-bar character, '|', to denote a logical "OR"
   construction.  Refer to RFC 2045 for the format of MIME-message-
   headers.

     The format of the AS3-MDN is

     MDN, no signature

       -RFC822/2045
         -RFC3798 (message/disposition-notification)

<<page break>>

     MDN, signature

       -RFC822/2045
         -RFC1847 (multipart/signed)
           -RFC3798 (message/disposition-notification)
           -RFC3851 (application/pkcs7-signature)

It should say:

   The AS3-MDN follows the MDN specification [6] except where noted in
|  this section.  Refer to RFC 2045 for the format of MIME headers.

|  The format of the AS3-MDN is

     MDN, no signature

|      -RFC2822/2045
|        -RFC3462 (multipart/report;
|                  report-type=disposition-notification)
|          -RFC2046 (text/plain)
|          -RFC3798 (message/disposition-notification,
|                    as modified by Section 7.4.2)

     MDN, signature

|      -RFC2822/2045
         -RFC1847 (multipart/signed)
|          -RFC3462 (multipart/report;
|                    report-type=disposition-notification)
|            -RFC2046 (text/plain)
|            -RFC3798 (message/disposition-notification)
           -RFC3851 (application/pkcs7-signature)

Notes:

Unlike, e.g., Section 4.2, the message structures depicted in
Section 7.4.1, on pages 23/24, are imprecise and misleading;
'message/disposition-notification' is *not* the atomic MIME entity
shown in the text; according to RFC 3798, the MDN is encapsulated
in a 'multipart/report', which has a mandatory first body part
of type 'text/plain', not shown in the current text.
Because RFC 4823 explicitely quotes RFC 822 (should better be 2822!),
RFC 2045, and RFC 3798, I strongly suspect that the specification
indeed wanted to re-use the MDN structure specified in RFC 3798.
This is supported by subsequent details exposed in Section 7.4.2.

Furthermore, the RFC text there introduces a notation that is not
made use of anywhere in the RFC. That sentence is to be deleted.


I have omitted the third, optional body part of the 'multipart/report'
-- cf. the final remark (#4) at the end of Appendix A.2 of RFC 4823,
which recommends against making use of it.

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