From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 05 1997 - 11:12:23 CST
kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen) wrote:
>chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) wrote on 03.11.97 in <9711031027.AA01495@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>:
>> No, you can't do that, because a line in the newsgroups file is already
>> expected to fit within 79 characters.
>That's not a technical limit. It's only a convention (and a doubtful one
>at that).
On the contrary, it is a very useful one. Existing software reilies on it.
There is not good reason to make it longer.
>> >Anything else should only be cases of obvious potential for
>> >harm, which essentially reduces to some specific ASCII characters like
>> >":%/&*?" (exact set TBD, but think "URL syntax" and "special shell
>> >characters". No non-ASCII characters should be on that list, and certainly
>> >not ASCII upper case. Leave that to hierarchy-specific rules.
One might allow some hierarchies to make local rules (closed subnets are
permitted to do this), but we have to provide the defaults - i.e. what
will suit the bulk of the existing hierarchies.
>>
>> No, the last thing we want is ugly punctuation in the middle of newsgroup
>The standard shouldn't dictate aesthetics.
Then who should. Tale? Somebody has to if news is to be convenient to
read.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------- Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506 Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5