From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Aug 10 2002 - 12:00:37 CDT
In <Pine.BSI.3.91.1020809143542.1934M-100000@spsystems.net> Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> writes:
>I'm concerned that we are leaving the door open for lots of random
>complications and diversity of this sort, when the moderators have already
>made it clear that they're going to have difficulty dealing with even the
>simplest and most tightly-specified encapsulation.
>I don't think that it is a good idea to leave these choices up to the user
>and/or implementor. The implementors have amply demonstrated their
>ability to do stupid things when the spec leaves the choice open. We're
>punting this problem to the moderators, rather than solving it; this
>strikes me as unwise.
>> > The draft should specifically call for "usage=moderate" (batches being
>> > legitimate only when "usage=relay" is present or implicit) and/or should
>> > make it clear that only one article may appear within.
>>
>> Actually, that is what it already says.
>What I'm suggesting is that submissions to moderators should be required
>to be usage=moderate; it *doesn't* already say that.
I think you are trying to fix the problem, if any, at the wrong place.
WHen submitting to a moderator, it would be ridiculous to use
"usage=relay". But omitting the usage parameter entirely is safe, because
"moderate" is implied by the fact that it was sent to a moderator's
submission address. All that is clear from the definition of
application/news-transmission.
So what we need to look at is the Duties of an Injecting Agent in
8.2.2(12)(a). It needs to mention the usage parameter, and it needs to
prevent stupidities like batches.
So it now says:
(a) The complete article is encapsulated (headers and all) within
the email, preferably using the Content-Type
"application/news-transmission" (6.21.6.1) with any usage
parameter set to "moderate". Moreover, there SHOULD NOT be
more than one encapsulated article within the one email.
This method has the advantage of removing any possible
conflict between Netnews and Email headers, or of changes to
those headers during transport through email (and in
particular, it ensures that any UTF8-xtra-chars within those
headers will pass safely through any email transport even if
it is 8bit-unsafe).
That still leaves the possibility that the email might be a multipart with
the news-transmission as one of them (so allowing for a "covering
letter"). I think that is a Good Thing insofar as it will encourage
moderators to use proper MIME decomposition tools, rather than just trying
to "strip off the email headers" as some of them are thinking of doing
them. We have given them a respite before encapsulation hits them (if it
ever does). They should use that respite to ensure that they do the job
with proper MIME tools.
As ever, LOUD SCREAMS by Tuesday if you want to take this further.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk 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