From: Claus Färber (list-ietf-wg-apps-usefor@faerber.muc.de)
Date: Sun Jan 06 2002 - 05:57:00 CST
Erland Sommarskog <sommar@algonet.se> schrieb/wrote:
> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Claus_F=E4rber?= (list-ietf-wg-apps-usefor@faerber.muc.de)
>> If you don't understand the difference between "looks weird" and
>> "breaks most software", I'm afraid I can't help you.
> "Breaks most software"? Uh? On which planet? Care to quote this long
> list of "most software"?
Come on, there have been enough reports on this list. I've also
run some own tests now, too (for which I just randomly selected
software I had available). I've collected both below.
It should also be noted that many users, esp. corporate users, as
well as newsadmins are reluctant to install new software. Even if
they had a benefit from it, they might not be the ones who decide.
It is a well-known fact that it takes more than a few years until
the installed base changes. The larger the installed base is, the
more this is true; Usenet is very large. So it's worth nothing if
the newest version of a software product fixes the problem.
MIME is 8 years old by now. Still, you obviously use software that
still does not support it (see the attribution line). Because of
the design of RFC 2047 that's not a big problem, it just looks
weired. But what if the result was that you can't send a message
at all?
> The major effect of brokeness that will appear, whether we use UTF-8
> or your funny conventions, is that names will not appear as intended.
No. If software that is not UTF-8 clean, this can have much more
impact:
1. A user is not able to read/subscribe to the newsgroup.[1]
2. A user is not able to post to the newsgroup.[2,3]
3. A user is not able to followup to an article cross-posted to
the newsgroup.[2,4]
4. A user's software creates bogous Followup-To headers in cross-
posted posts due to character set conversion issues.[5]
5. Articles are dropped as illegal.[6]
6. A sysadmin can't create the newsgroup.[7]
7. A sysadmin creates the newsgroup incorrectly due to
character set conversion issues.[7]
8. Automated creation of newsgroups breaks.[8]
9. Per-hierarchy configuration of moderator addresses
(%s@moderators.example.com) breaks.
10. Generic Mail<->News gateways break.[9]
11. Breaks other standards, such as URI and NNTP specs.
[1] Examples:
- Opera 6.0 (Win32): "The newsgroup is not known on the
server."
- slrn 0.9.6.3: "This group appears to be bogus."
[2] - Netscape Communicator 4.73 (de, Win32): "Die Kopfzeile für
Diskussionsforen ist ungültig" (~ Invalid Newsgroup
header)
- Mozilla 0.9.7: crash
[3] - MSOE (version unknown), XNews (version unkown)[X], Gnus
(non-CVS)[X]: See message from Per Abraham, 2001-09-21,
<mid:rjwv2thsdb.fsf@ssv2.dina.kvl.dk>, archived at
<http://www.landfield.com/usefor/2001/Sep/0017.html>
[4] - slrn 0.9.6.3: <<Article rejected: 441 No valid newsgroups in
"=?iso-8859-1?Q?de.test,dk.test.utf8-=E6=F8=E5?=">>
[5] - slrn 0.9.6.3 encodes the entire newsgroup header in RFC
2047. Depending on the group list, this results in the
posting beeing rejected (see [3]) or in some newsgroups
to be mangled. For an example, see
<mid:slrna2palk.8fk.claus-20011228@kurt.stuve.uni-muenchen.de>,
available on servers that carry dk.test or de.alt.test.
[6] Hard to test and seems to be the smallest problem.
[7] Depends on the MUA and editor software the admin uses.
[8] INN version 2.3.2: See message from Vera Heinau, 2001-09-21,
<mid:20010921104815.A95197@CIS.FU-Berlin.DE>, archived at
<http://www.landfield.com/usefor/2001/Sep/0018.html>
INN 2.3.2 and 2.3.3: See message from Per Abrahamsen, 2001-09-21,
<mid:rjk7ysbw93.fsf@ssv2.dina.kvl.dk>, archived at
<http://www.landfield.com/usefor/2001/Sep/0020.html>
[9] Sendmail will cripple the entire message body by converting
it to quoted-printable, including encapuslated headers.
Claus
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