From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Sep 13 2002 - 10:37:57 CDT
In <3D80C64C.3030407@alex.blilly.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Ralph Babel wrote:
>> Considering the basic similarities between mail and news,
>> and considering that mail is used to submit - typically
>> unencapsulated - netnews articles to moderators and also
>> to forward/gateway articles, and also keeping in mind that
>> - according to our beloved editor - mail and news share a
>> common message ID space ...
>>
>> Does it make sense to have incompatible syntax
>> for header fields common to mail and news?
>[once again, the issue isn't quite as clear-cut as the canned
>selections indicate...]
>> 1. No, not at all. Headers common to mail and news should be
>> 100% compatible to ease the transition between the two,
>> and even news-only headers should be 7-bit and use
>> standard MIME encodings.
>Clearly, any message that travels via email MUST comply
>with the relevant email RFCs and protocols, and that includes
>the issue of permissible characters and character sequences
>in headers and body.
Not necessarily. Yes, we should provide all the encodings needed to do the
job properly (we do, except for the small matter of User-Agent which needs
to be looked at). But in cases where the agent at the far end is known
to be news-compatible, and you are just using mail as the transport, the
implementor can afford to be a bit more relaxed (it is his risk, of
course). See for example Russ' last post.
>b) encode/decode for email transmission.
Yes, this will be the normal method.
> This requires a
> suitable encoding scheme (the MIME mechanisms are not
> entirely suitable for newsgroup names). It also requires
> that the encoding be implemented in user agents, gateways,
> and injection agents. It does not address the
> incompatibility with some existing news software. The
> encode/decode procedures (which must be implemented in
> user agents, gateways, and injection agents) will be
> complex as they will need to be able to handle Unicode
> normalization rules.
No, we carefully arranged that normalization was not essential in user
agents (though there is no harm in it). You expect cutting and pasting not
to introduce anomalies (and hopefully to correct them if found) and you
expect keyboard drivers and editors to produce normalized output. But
those are usually OS functions, not specially coded into the user agent.
Injectors maybe SHOULD check that normalizations are correct, but the only
place where it MUST be checked is in the part of the server that responds
to newgroup control messages.
>c) encode/decode for human I/O in the user agent. Content in
> headers in a format compatible with email (MIME
> encoding where applicable, draft sect. 5.5.2 encoding for
> newsgroup names). There are no encode/decode requirements
> for gateways or injection agents. There is no incompatibility
> with existing news software.
Yes, but you don't have to do it just in your user agents. You also have
to do it in your killfiles, your spam filters, and your general
administration scripts. That is the real pain of all encoded-on-the-wire
solutions.
>> 3. Same as #1, but no restrictions on news-only headers,
>> e.g. if someone includes an 8-bit news header in mail,
>> it's their own fault. After all, there's
>> application/news-transmission.
>First, the problem caused by 8-bit cruft in headers
>affects not only the perpetrator, but others (recipients,
>including moderators, system administrators, etc.) as well.
>Second, until such time as the draft becomes an official RFC,
>there *isn't* application/news-transmission.
Yes there is. It has been an official part of MIME for 6 years or more
(look it up on www.iana.org).
In any case, even if few agents currently recognize it as such, that is
no problem because treating it as application/octet-stream does near
enough the right thing.
Moderators with suitable user agents should be able to construct a
suitable news-transmission plug-in.
-- 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