From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Thu Mar 06 2003 - 12:10:53 CST
On 3/6/03 11:54 AM, Bruce Lilly at <blilly@erols.com> wrote:
> The news article format (RFC 1036) is a subset of the general message
> format (RFC 822 as extended and amended by the host requirements, MIME,
> etc.). IMAP didn't "adopt" "Netnews"; IMAP (and SMTP, POP, etc.) handles
> the full message format, including the subset that is "news".
Why does this working group exist? Because 1036 is inadequate.
Anyone that thinks they are including the subset of messages called "news"
simply because they can deal with 1036 compliant messages, is seriously
mistaken.
IMAP doesn't do "news", although it may do 1036.
If you think I'm wrong, it's easy enough to prove -- simply name ONE major
news service provider that carries nothing but 1036 compliant messages.
Alternatively if you think they should /become/ 1036 compliant, simply
convince one of them to do so -- if you can convince Andrew that he should
drop all non-compliant articles, or convince Russ that INN should be
rewritten so that it won't accept or relay non-compliant articles, then we
can start talking about 1036 as being the "standard".
This group exist because there is *NO* standard other than what works in the
real world. We are to supposed to describe what is happening, and try to
shape what will happen in the future -- parts of 1036 are relevant, others
aren't.
The majority of messages sent with non-ASCII content in headers, are sent
with "raw" byte values, not 2047 encoded. That's a fact, that's part of
"news", although it may not be part of 1036. We are /supposed/ to be
telling people that /want/ to write news software what to expect -- if we
tell them that what they should expect is ASCII, then we are LYING to them.
IMAPs assumption that "news" is just mail with an extra header or two, is
one of the mistakes this group is /supposed/ to prevent.
-- J.B. Moreno