Re: 8-bit transmission in NNTP

[Mark.R.Horton@xxxxxxx]

On Sep 9,  2:42pm, Mark Crispin wrote:

> On the other hand, it is arguable that the ``all the world is UNIX'' attitude
> is an acceptable one for netnews and there really is no problem with ``just
> send 8 bits'' in netnews.

Uh, there are just a few more Windows PCs and Macs out there than UNIX boxes.
There is Netnews in that world, too.

In particular, there are differences in newline conventions.  UNIX uses LF,
DOS/Windows uses CRLF.  Don't know about the Mac - CRLF?  "Just send 8" would
seem to interfere with translation from one into the other.

> There is, of course, a problem for implementors of
> software that supports both mail and news, since they would have to keep
> firmly in mind that they can't ``just send 8 bits'' in mail (read: we'll see
a
> lot of illicit 8-bit SMTP to non-EHLO servers).

>-- End of excerpt from Mark Crispin



On Sep 9,  3:45pm, Erik E. Fair (Internet Architect) wrote:

> As one of the original authors of NNTP, and as a participant in the
> MIME effort, I can authoritatively say that NNTP was indeed explicitly
> 7-bit NETASCII, and anyone just sending 8 bits is in violation of
> protocol. The whole idea behind MIME was to get the user interface
> software changed to properly support character sets other than ASCII
> *independent* of transport and it does no damn good if we don't label
> the silly things which is where the "just send 8 bits" idiocy leaves
> us. This goes for NetNews too.
>
> 	Erik E. Fair	apple!fair	fair@apple.com
>-- End of excerpt from Erik E. Fair (Internet Architect)

Amen.  And as one of the original authors of the Netnews RFC, I can
authoritatively say that Netnews is intended to be compatible with e-mail.
This implies that you get 7 bits, local newline conventions, reasonably
short lines, etc, unless you agree otherwise.  You're supposed to be able
to e-mail Netnews articles around (indeed, the moderation mechanism and
reply command depend on this.)  Originally you were supposed to be able to
use an e-mail UA on Netnews data, but that never panned out.

	Mark