On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 18:21:20 +0200, Siegfried Schmitt said:
> Hello Paul,
>
> so far as I can see in
>
>    ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfcxx00.txt
>
> RFC 2369 is only a 'proposed standard' at this moment.
> Maybe somebody should try to push this forward on the
> standards track.

Take a careful read through there.  There's a *LOT* of stuff stuck at
'Proposed Standard' or even "Draft Standard':

Proposed:
MAIL       Internet Message Format                                 2822
SMTP       Simple Mail Transfer Protocol                           2821
URLMAILTO  The mailto URL scheme                                   2368

Draft:
HTTP       Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1                 2616
DSN        An Extensible Message Format for Delivery               3464
              Status Notifications
EMS-CODE   Enhanced Mail System Status Codes                       3463
MIME-RPT   The Multipart/Report Content Type for the               3462
              Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages
SMTP-DSN   Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Service            3461
              Extension for Delivery Status Notifications (DSNs)
MIME-CONF  Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)            2049
              Part Five: Conformance Criteria and Examples
MIME-MSG   MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)            2047
              Part Three: Message Header Extensions for
              Non-ASCII Text
MIME-MEDIA Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)            2046
              Part Two: Media Types
MIME       Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)            2045
              Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies

So it isn't like we don't do a lot of stuff with not-full standards....

(Actually, other than the SNMP/MIB geeks and the packet encapsulation/routing geeks, the
IETF has moved very little to Full Standard in a *LONG* time:

SMTP-SIZE  SMTP Service Extension for Message Size Declaration 1870  10
POP3       Post Office Protocol - Version 3                    1939  53
SMTP-Pipe  SMTP Service Extension for Command Pipelining       2920  60
ONE-PASS   A One-Time Password System                          2289  61
UTF-8      UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646         3629  63*
RTP        RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications3550  64*
RTP-AV     RTP Profile for Audio and Video Conferences         3551  65*
              with Minimal Control
--------   Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax   3986  66*

That's literally *it* for Full Standard after RFC1400 or so, excluding the
SNMP and encapsulation/routing RFCs.

The reason for this is because 'Full Standard' in the IETF sense means "this has
evolved as far as it ever will, and there's no likely improvements or resolutions
of ambiguities in the next decade or so".  HTTP isn't anywhere near ready for
Full Standard - we've still got stuff like WebDAV popping up to extend it.
Neither is SMTP - it's still a moving target with things like SPF in flux....