From: Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net)
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 15:47:28 CDT
On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Bruce Lilly wrote:
> > As I think I've mentioned a few times before, INN rejects all messages
> > that have headers without a space after the colon, and the upcoming NNTP
> > standard revision will likely also require the space because that's what
> > existing software expects and it makes the descriptions of various header
> > retrieval commands much more straightforward.
>
> Sounds like a chicken-and-egg situation. INN isn't actually breaking
> on receipt of a message with the SP after colon.
No, it's just losing traffic, i.e. failing to interoperate. That is more
than enough reason to (at best) relegate such a change to a "Future
Directions" section. Declaring a "flag day" on which all existing INN
systems must be upgraded would be ludicrous. This has to be accepted as a
limitation of the existing infrastructure, and hence a constraint on the
standard.
> ...Let's not perpetuate a difference from 822/2822
> unless there's a very good reason to do so.
Preserving interoperability with a large installed base is usually
considered a very good reason.
(And no, interoperability with the installed base of mail systems is not
a significant issue by comparison: news-mail interchange has always
required non-trivial efforts by gateways, and there is no prospect of
eliminating that.)
Henry Spencer
henry@spsystems.net