Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: IMPORTANT: Users of Rodney's UUCP modules / GUS
Message-ID: <9DoZ29w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 15 May 91 12:54:55 GMT
References: <DByX213w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 46

I wrote:
> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
> > Totally incorrect.  C News generates four-digit years everywhere and accept
> > them everywhere.
> 
> Dearie me!  RFC1036 says that the format MUST be acceptable to RFC822. And
> RFC822 says:
[...that 4-digit years are Not Allowed...]

Someone has already pointed out to me that RFC822 and RFC1036 have, to some
extent, been superceded.

This is fair enough, but I suspect that there's a lot of software out there
which only understands RFC822/1036, so it's still a bad idea for C News to
generate headers not in RFC822 format.

And this next point of mine still stands:
> Look, I don't care what the mistake is or who made it. C News should not
> discard an article unless it is unable to correct the header; and if it does
> discard an article, it should at least attempt to warn the poster.

I now believe that the articles were being dropped because the Date: field
said

   Date: Wed 15 May 1991 13:54 GMT

instead of

   Date: Wed, 15 May 1991 13:54 GMT

And as I said in my previous article:

> If it *was* the missing comma, then I apologise for assuming that it was the
> non-RFC822 4-digit year which was at fault. I don't apologise for the
> flaming, though. A missing comma in the date is such a simple-to-allow-for
> and likely-to-occur error that I still think C News is VERY wrong to drop
> articles because of it.

So you can stop mailing me with pedantic comments about last week's revision
to RFC4943b allowing dates in Roman Numerals, and get down to discussing the
REAL issue, which is the stupidity and rudeness of C News's behaviour.


mathew