DESCRIPTION file: Space after colon mandatory?

According to R-exts, DESCRIPTION is a DCF variant, and " Fields start 
with an ASCII name immediately followed by a colon: the value starts 
after the colon and a space." However, according to the linked 
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html, 
horizontal space before and after a value are trimmed, this is also the 
behavior of read.dcf().

Is this an omission in the documentation, or is the space after the 
colon actually required? Thanks.


Best regards

Kirill