Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!geoff
From: geoff@zoo.toronto.edu (Geoffrey Collyer)
Subject: Re: C-News passing on bad headers?
Message-ID: <1991Feb18.040244.11569@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1991Feb16.000922.785@vixvax.mgi.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 1991 04:02:44 GMT

William H. Glass:
>RFC1036 (which describes news articles) says:
>>    Each header line consist of a keyword, a colon, a blank, and some
>>    additional information.

C news hasn't been real compulsive in the past about enforcing some of
the more obscure and pernickety requirements of RFC 1036 (to be fair,
neither were the B news versions we used to use).  There didn't seem to
be any reason to be any stickier about header format than RFC 822
required, in particular.  We have since had quite a few complaints from
people running other news software that blows a blood vessel when
handed an article that doesn't follow the letter of the RFC and so, as
time permits, we are making C news more restrictive.  In particular,
the next patch should include code to require all the Required Headers
specified by RFC 1036 (all you folks running sloppy mail-news
gateways:  now's the time to fix them).  I'll add the
"space-must-follow-colon" requirement to the to-be-done list.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!geoff, zoo.toronto.edu!geoff
