From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 07 2004 - 23:55:18 CDT
Henry Spencer <henry@spsystems.net> writes:
> On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> I'm not sure where you got the "all.all" from.
> Straight from RFC 1036, actually! If one believed 1036 (or 850 before
> it), the .ctl suffix was recognized only as the third component of a
> three-component newsgroup name (although this could have been stated in
> a more implementation-independent way). With the possible exception of
> B News, I don't think anyone ever actually implemented that restriction.
Oh! I see. I was confused by what Charles said and thought he meant
literally the newsgroup name all.all.ctl. Gomen.
That limitation only makes sense in the world prior to the Great Renaming,
but it wouldn't be the only thing in news RFCs that only makes sense in
that context. (The bizarre distribution parameter to NEWNEWS and
NEWGROUPS in RFC 977 has a similar problem.)
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>