Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!oliveb!tymix!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: brentp@microsoft
Keywords: enough!
Message-ID: <2556@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 14 Oct 88 17:03:28 GMT
References: <16262@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <16268@ames.arc.nasa.gov> <9073@bigtex.uucp> <217@ispi.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 23

>> > I notice a tab in the first entry in brentp@microsoft's files. Could
>> > this be causing propagation problems?
>> Yes.  It prevents inews from realizing that it has seen this article
>> before.
>A possible solution to this is to manually edit the offending article
>and replace the tab with a space.  That will at least keep that copy
>from propogating itself ad-infinitium

A space won't screw up history, but it will prevent cancel or
supersede messages from working.  In any case, the official
specification for the format of Usenet articles (I believe the number
is RFC1036) forbids tabs OR spaces in Message-IDs.

One would be justified in discarding articles with tabs or spaces in
Message-IDs, but in the spirit of "be liberal in what you accept and
conservative in what you send", I recommend squishing out any
whitespace in message-IDs.


-- 
- Joe Buck, card-carrying ACLU liberal
	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, or uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck,
	or jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net for old Arpa sites