From: Frank Ellermann (nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de)
Date: Thu Jul 08 2004 - 22:51:51 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 1. In current versions of INN, the injector (POST
> command/whatever) modifies the article by adding a Control
> header (so now every site on Usenet will see it and obey it
[...]
> I assume we intend to forbid #1 outright
Why ? It's something between me and my news server, nobody
else has any business to declare this as "verboten". In the
case of "Subject: cmsg cancel <x>" it does what I want it to
do. And in the case of "Subject: cmsg foobar" I would get an
error => your #3.
Your reasoning based on "#1 is nonsense" doesn't work for me,
it's a nice solution causing no harm for anybody else. Much
more convincing than automatically encoding "Subject: cmsg ",
that's a solution for gateways (maybe).
> First abolish the behaviour (#1)
For what purpose ? As soon as "Subject: cmsg " is handled in
any special way #1 (with fallback #3) is the best way. Not
for gateways, where "reject" is actually "bounce", that's the
place where MIME encoding of "cmsg " makes more sense than #3.
> There exist, and will continue to exist, servers which
> a) implement #2 (bad)
> b) implement #3 (to protect against #2)
> c) do neither (treat as normal articles)
d) try #1 if possible before #3, a special case of b)
> Assume our draft deprecates #2. Then the number implementing
> #2 will wither away as sites become compliant.
If #2 still exists after more than ten years s-o-1936 I'm not
sure about "wither away". #2 _is_ already deprecated, in my
parallel universe, where 1036bis is relevant. But #2 is common
practice in Bruce's universe, where 1036bis is irrelevant, and
B news is the reference implementation.
Bye, Frank