8bit & i18n (was Re: ietf-nntp My notes ...)

[Paul Overell]

In article <199612190355.VAA08016 at academ.com>, Stan Barber
<sob at academ.com> writes

>This is really not an RFC 977bis issue. It might be an RFC 1036-related issue
>since there is a newsgroups header.
>

Why should newsgroup name syntax be more of an issue for RFC1036bis 
rather than RFC977bis?  Both use newsgroup names, both need to know what 
characters are allowed.

Newsgroup name syntax is an issue for RFC977 at least in so far as the 
NEWNEWS command syntax implicitly requires than newsgroup names do not 
contain whitespace, comma, asterisk, or exclamation mark.

One of the flaws in the news specs, RFC977/RFC1036, is that they both 
left little details like this undefined.  The result of this lack of 
precision is that these small details get defined to be "whatever the 
software does".  This may have been tolerable where there was only one 
implementation, but not now.

For example, the thread on back filling only arose because RFC977 failed 
to define the detail of article numbering, everyone "knew" that article 
numbers are monotonic.

These little details, such as newsgroup name syntax, need specifying.
 
-- 
Paul Overell                                        T U R N P I K E  Ltd