Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew
From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (CNEWS MUST DIE!)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: CNEWS MUST DIE!
Message-ID: <4iTa324w164w@mantis.co.uk>
Date: 21 May 91 13:19:26 GMT
Article-I.D.: mantis.4iTa324w164w
References: <1991May20.215138.12821@solbourne.com>
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.
Lines: 40

kucharsk@solbourne.com (William Kucharski) writes:
> Well, hell then, let's just throw out all protocol specs and allow things whi
> are "close enough."  This is a rather rash statement, but when there is a
> published document stating how things _should_ be, why should that software
> then have to correct information not in that format to conform to the publish
> one?

Because errors happen.

People make mistakes. People edit news headers. Therefore there will always
be news headers which contain errors.

Punishing people for making errors is not productive.

> It kind of strikes me as the whole war that some Mac developers have waged in
> the past.  Yes, they'll do really nifty things on the Mac but they'll do thin
> that _Inside Macintosh_ told them not to do, and when a new System comes out
> and their app breaks, they're surprised.

But at least they get told about it.

I'm not asking to be allowed to continue sending out bad headers. I'm asking
to be told when I do send out bad headers, so that I can fix the problem (if
it is a problem). I'm asking that correctable errors be corrected, so that
the human beings who post news articles do not have to go through the headers
which they have just edited, character by character, making sure that there is
not a mistake.

>                                            The RFC's been around for a few
> years; software should have been changed to follow it by now.

Why?  Software doesn't change by magic. You have to tell people when they're
doing something wrong. They might not know. For all I know, the fact that my
news program missed the "," out of the date might have been a typo by the
author.


mathew