Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!encore!pinocchio.encore.com!jjoy
From: jjoy@encore.com (Jennifer Joy)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Header woes, innocuous errors, and users
Keywords: space (the-final-frontier)
Message-ID: <15329@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 19 Jun 91 19:14:20 GMT
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Reply-To: jjoy@encore.com (Jennifer Joy)
Organization: Encore Computer Corp, Marlboro, MA
Lines: 30
Nntp-Posting-Host: pinocchio.encore.com


As a new admin I've spent the last few days reading over 400 news.admin
and 200 news.software.b messages.  (ok, so I didn't read ALL of them..8)

I've got a tossed message that doesn't fit quite so neatly (or so it
appears to me) into the pigeonholes of "bad news software so user suffers"
and "bad newreader so user suffers."  In this case, by apparent user error
the all-important <space> after the Followup-To: line was removed.  To
the eye it looks the same, but because that space was removed, Pnews
was prevented from removing the "blank" line.  This resulted in a message
with a pristine (<cough>, well, by most RFC quibbles) header, except for 
this silly Followup-To: line with no arguments.

So this message was tossed on the floor by ukma (and other cnews mailers) 
and tagged as "non-header header line."

Somewhere (and I hope someone can point me to the right spot) one
of the RFCs must say why an optional header line, if included, cannot
be blank. (and no, I've not had the time to read very carefully...
remember your first weeks? 8)

Anyway, the user (I think, I could be wrong! but I checked than Pnews
does remove the line if the space is left there, and the line appears
if the space is taken away) is at both ends of this one.     

and thanks to: Bill Davidson, Paul Eggert, Bill Fenner, and Dewey Henize
who provided some helpful pointers!

jennifer
jjoy@encore.com