[TriLUG] Monthly mailman reminders and procmail

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Mike M wrote:

>Postel's Law from RFC 793
>(ref. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc793.txt)
>
>2.10.  Robustness Principle
>
>  TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness:  be
>  conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from
>  others.
>
>(ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel)
>  
>

Once again, I will champion "The Art of UNIX Programming" by ESR, and 
quote thusly:

However, heed also this warning:
The original HTML documents recommended “be generous in what you 
accept”, and it has bedeviled us ever since because each browser accepts 
a different superset of the specifications. It is the specifications 
that should be generous, not their interpretation.
-- Doug McIlroy

McIlroy adjures us to /design/ for generosity rather than compensating 
for inadequate standards with permissive implementations. Otherwise, as 
he rightly points out, it's all too easy to end up in tag soup.

## End quote from TAoUP

I suppose what's to be learned, is that one should be careful what you 
read into Postel's law. :)

Aaron S. Joyner