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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: C News's conservatism
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.200538.15677@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1991 20:05:38 GMT
References: <1991Jun26.155257.5692@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991Jun26.182201.10100@twinsun.com>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <1991Jun26.182201.10100@twinsun.com> eggert@twinsun.com (Paul Eggert) writes:
>The logic is inexorable.  By this argument, the signs of liberality in
>what C News currently accepts are bugs, strictly speaking, if the
>article is sent elsewhere.  E.g. to conform with the RFCs, C News
>should no longer forward articles whose dates have days like
>`Wednesday' or hours like `1:23:45'.

Essentially correct.  We may never enforce 100.0% conformity, because it's
costly and largely pointless.  However, any areas in which enforcement is
currently loose are historical accidents rather than guarantees.  Should a
specific reason for tighter enforcement appear, it will happen.

This all, mind you, refers to *relaying*, where the combination of distrust
of automatic "repair" of problems and unwillingness to rewrite headers
without dire need leads us inevitably to constraining the form of input
to match the form of output.  We *are* rather more liberal in what we
accept as local postings, and inews does do certain kinds of cleanup.
-- 
"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