Xref: utzoo news.software.b:7966 news.admin:14668 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!celit!billd From: billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin Subject: Re: Really funny jokes being missed Message-ID: <18026@celit.fps.com> Date: 27 May 91 00:48:45 GMT References: <1991May26.082113@mccall.com> Followup-To: news.software.b Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA Lines: 36 In article <1991May26.082113@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes: >Are you saying you do or don't want novice users to attempt to correct the >headers in ways C news likes? I've been talking about headers that are >valid to B news, but not C news. There's a big difference between valid and acceptable. Bnews accepts some types of invalid headers. I believe it tries to fix some of them. >You seem to be saying that the user should >verify his headers, but that he should be required to read and understand >the RFC's before doing so. Are all your users required to read RFC822 and >RFC1036 before using news? Mine aren't, and I don't think they should be. Where do you get this stuff? Nobody said anything like that. Most headers are created by the posting software and any user created headers should be verified as proper and possibly fixed by the posting software, not the transport software. People who write posting software certainly SHOULD read RFC822 and RFC1036. If you're using broken software, you should fix it or change to software that isn't broken. >Given the wide range of date formats that B news handles, did you honestly >believe that there is no news software that generates any of them but the >one in RFC822? Nobody thought that. Bnews handles invalid headers not because it's right to do so but in order to avoid having all the bozos with broken software from complaining. Well, now you are. It would have been better if Bnews had never accepted bad headers. That way the inevitable pain would have been out of the way years ago and involved many fewer sites. At some point it had to happen. No time like the present. --Bill Davidson