Xref: utzoo news.software.b:7797 news.newusers.questions:5126 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!psuvax1!news From: flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: Why no spaces allowed in "Newsgroups: " header? Message-ID: Date: 18 May 91 19:24:27 GMT References: <9621@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991May17.153440.28142@midway.uchicago.edu> <1991May18.111940.22309@cbfsb.att.com> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 18 Nntp-Posting-Host: dictionopolis.cs.psu.edu >it's odd that in e-mail and most other headers, a space or 2 is ok... >but not in the "Newsgroups:" line. This has always been the case, in every version of news I've seen. It's decribed (rather poorly) in RFC-1036. I think this is one of the worse botches in the news system interface, but it's rather too late to change it now. Better to let everyone stumble over this once. Or maybe the posting-front-end should delete spaces in the Newsgroups line. Then we only have to deal with cross-confusion during the ten-year migration period ("Joe put spaces in and his worked, why doesn't mine?"). (You can't fix it in the news transmission software, because you'd have to fix it in everyone's news software, everywhere, which is quite unlikely.) -- Felix Lee flee@cs.psu.edu