Xref: utzoo news.software.b:8056 news.admin:14767 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp From: tp@mccall.com Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin Subject: Re: Important TESTED patch for dxrn/mxrn Message-ID: <1991May30.120936.1009@mccall.com> Date: 30 May 91 18:09:35 GMT References: <1991May24.082757@mccall.com> Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 70 In article , stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes: > In article <1991May24.082757@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes: >>Sorry about the last one, this patch produces RFC822 compatible dates as >>best I can tell, and hopefully this will statisfy C news. >> > [...] >> >>BTW, it has been suggested to me in email that it would be easier to fix >>C news. > > Do you care to write software that will shuffle through all the possible > permutations of Date: lines and fix them up to something that might not even > be correct? Why not just fix the source of the problem, which is your soft- > ware that is generating non-compliant Date: header lines. The routine you describe existed in the previous version of C news. It read the Date: lines produced by dxrn just fine. BTW, dxrn isn't my software, I'm just a user. And I don't want it to fix all permutations of Date: line and turn them into something possibly incorrect, but the de facto standard for Date: lines on usenet has been (for at least the 6 years I've been on net) the set of dates that B news will accept, until now, when the C news community has taken it upon themselves to switch form the de facto standard to the de jure standard with no warning to the rest of the world. >> The authors and proponents of C news don't consider this a problem, >>they did it on purpose, and as far as I can tell, most of them really don't >>care, since their articles aren't being dropped. The bottom line is that >>they refuse to do anything about this, and since many sites run C news, >>the only practical option is to conform to their software. I would like to > > Get it straight -- you're not conforming to their software, you're conforming > to internationally recognized standards for Date: line format. Your software > was bad all along, and C-news has finally started enforcing the standard. Get it straight, dxrn conforms to the internationally recognized standard, but not to the internationally published standard. Cnews switched standards. Therefore, I'm changing dxrn to conform to C news. B news likes the old version just fine. I don't have a problem with switching to the official standard, but it would've been nice to find out about it other than by having my news articles dropped on the floor. Like maybe, before the change was made, so I (or the author) could've fixed dxrn in advance. (I don't buy the idea that nobody would have fixed the software if advance warning were given, I know I would have fixed dxrn even if the author didn't.) You haven't been paying attention to this debate, have you? Nothing I've said here is new. Nice to see you've got the official party line memorized though. Was that in the intro to the patch or something? > That's all there is to it. Yep, pretty typical of the C news community. You don't give a damn what problems you cause others, as long as your software works. Must be another part of the official party line. Could someone send me a copy? It would save you all repeating it over and over. I especially like the way you get from accepting B news formats to accepting random bizarre junk and having to repair it, and since this is impossible, you can't accept the B news formats anymore, even though it wasn't so tough in the previous release. This reasoning has to be published somewhere, I can't imagine so many people inventing it independently. It'd sure be gratifying for someone to admit that this changeover was badly handled. At least then we'd have some indication that a little more effort will be put forth next time to avoid such a mess. (I'm sure there will be a next time, since it is C news' mission to save the world from non-conformant software.) -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!deimos!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA