Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!herald.usask.ca!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!percy!m2xenix!quagga!undeed!barrett From: barrett@Daisy.EE.UND.AC.ZA (Alan P Barrett) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: Changes to CNEWS date parsing - what is now legal? Message-ID: <1991Jun28.154101.6873@Daisy.EE.UND.AC.ZA> Date: 28 Jun 91 15:41:01 GMT References: <21JUN91230123@carat.arizona.edu> <1991Jun22.213542.2256@twinsun.com> <1991Jun24.202026.16593@zoo.toronto.edu> Organization: Univ. Natal, Durban, S. Africa Lines: 42 In article <1991Jun24.202026.16593@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: > About the only change that is likely is that if -- as is reportedly > likely -- the next revision of 1123 comes out with a SHOULD > almost-mandating use of numeric timezone plus a parenthesized comment > with local abbreviation, we will probably amend the code to accept the > comment (currently rejected because 1036 does not allow 822 comments > in headers). It is not clear to me that 1036 forbids comments in Date lines. RFC 1036 says: " RFC-822 specifies that all text in parentheses is to be interpreted " as a comment. It is common in Internet mail to place the full name " of the user in a comment at the end of the "From" line. This " standard specifies a more rigid syntax. The full name is not " considered a comment, but an optional part of the header line. " Either the full name is omitted, or it appears in parentheses after " the electronic address of the person posting the message, or it " appears before an electronic address which is enclosed in angle " brackets. Thus, the three permissible forms are: " " From: mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM " From: mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) " From: Mark Horton The ``more rigorous syntax'' in which parentheses are not treated as comments appears to me to apply only to From: (and Sender:) lines. " The "Date" line (formerly "Posted") is the date that the message was " originally posted to the network. Its format must be acceptable " both in RFC-822 and to the getdate(3) routine that is provided with " the Usenet software. Clear as mud. What does ``must be acceptable to the getdate(3) routine'' really mean? It really is high time 1036 was rewritten. --apb Alan Barrett, Dept. of Electronic Eng., Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa RFC822: barrett@ee.und.ac.za Bang: m2xenix!quagga!undeed!barrett