Xref: utzoo news.software.nntp:1409 news.software.b:8318
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp,news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: NNTPD hates Message-IDs with TWO '@'s in them.
Message-ID: <1991Jun18.191531.10098@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1991 19:15:31 GMT
References: <1991Jun15.212751.1558@twinsun.com> <6020@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> <1991Jun17.191642.27639@zoo.toronto.edu> <6038@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <6038@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> sob@tmc.edu (Stan Barber) writes:
>>C News doesn't do 100% RFC822/1036 header enforcement because that is
>>complex and time-consuming and unnecessary.  We generally enforce only
>>those restrictions that appear to be necessary for some specific reason.
>...
>I guess this means that badly installed CNEWS sites are no cause for 
>concern.

I'd be interested to know how you reached that conclusion from what I said.

I plan to tighten up build's checking on site names and such, and fussier
checking of message IDs will at least be considered.

>It is interesting to hear that a CNEWS author considers to be irrelevant
>if implementing the standard is too hard or too complex. 

If you have a fast, small, easy-to-use parser for full RFC822, Geoff would
love to hear from you.  We do not consider the standard "irrelevant", we
consider it "expensive", and prefer to avoid implementing features that
contribute nothing to the functioning of a news system except slowness.
This does mean that we occasionally have cause to revise our opinion of
some feature, when it turns out that its lack causes problems.

>However, I do believe we now have seen a case where it is necessary. 
>There is news posting software out there that generates bad message-ids.
>This should be stopped by the news transport software.

I am inclined to agree, although I would like to see a concise description
of *exactly* what restrictions should be enforced, since full 822 parsing
is ridiculously complex and expensive and appears to be overkill.  If it's
just the absence of multiple @s, that ought to be feasible.
-- 
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry