Both forms are legit but the way news and standards documents are going is
for the first form to be discouraged. This effectively means that
software should accept both forms but only generate the second (this is
when the article is first created not by someone half way around the
world).
The problem with the first form is that stuff in brackets is actually a
"comment" rather than the name of the poster. This means that there is no
way using the first form to actually say what your name is, it is just
that most people say their name in the comment field. They could just as
easily say something else. This means that software that displays the
comment field as th name is just taking a guess.
The 2nd format puts the name of the posted in a definate place that
software can work with and allows you to leave the use of brackets for
comments.
The current internet draft that on this that will most likely replace
RFC 822 on this point is at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-04.txt
The bit is section 3.4 which says:
Note: Some legacy implementations used the simple form where the addr-spec
appears without the angle brackets, but included the name of the recipient
in parentheses as a comment following the addr-spec. Since the meaning of
the information in a comment is unspecified, implementations SHOULD use
the full name-addr form of the mailbox if a name of the recipient is being
used instead of the legacy form. Also, because some legacy implementations
interpret the comment, comments SHOULD NOT generally be used in address
fields to avoid confusion.
-- Simon J. Lyall. | Very Busy | Mail: simon@darkmere.gen.nz "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | MT.
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