From: Kai Henningsen (kaih@khms.westfalen.de)
Date: Sun Oct 03 1999 - 10:05:00 CDT
chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk (Charles Lindsey) wrote on 30.09.99 in <FIvA2I.9Hq@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>:
> In <87vh8tis6g.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth
> <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
>
> >>>>>> "Charles" == Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:
>
> > Charles> Sure there is no technical justification, but current
> > Charles> practice is not to be ignored.
>
> >It is when it exists only for hysterical raisins.
>
> OK, we have a plain disagreement here. When this was discussed nearly two
> years ago, the agreement was to follow current practice. We can of course
> change that, so I solicit further opinions from the list.
>
> Do you want to allow uppercase names in newsgroup-names?
Yes. They seem to work just fine, technically. And there are certainly
good reasons to use them in _some_ cases.
> Do you want to allow any other punctuation characters beyond the present
> "+" / "-" / "_" ?
Certainly those outside the ASCII range. They're extremely unlikely to
cause any problems that aren't already caused by allowing anything outside
ASCII.
Control characters are more problematical, but I can certainly see uses
for, say, U+202A (LEFT-TO-RIGHT EMBEDDING, LRE) and friends. Maybe just
add a note for readers to be careful about display - which is a good idea
in any case.
As for those inside ASCII, I know that [.:/], at least, would certainly
cause problems. So I'd say that unless someone can make a good case for
one of these not causing problems (that is, doing the legwork to check
software), they should stay excluded.
MfG Kai