ietf-nntp xover tabs and newlines

[Brian Hernacki]

Eric Cole wrote:
> 
> >Eric Cole wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello
> >>
> >> What is the appropriate behavior to deal with headers containing tabs
> >> and/or newlines when responding to an xover command.
> >
> >This is the right place to talk about the results of XOVER (OVER) and
> >their format. The 1036/message-format list would be appropriate for
> >discussion a general "problem" with news article headers containing tabs
> >and newlines.
> >
> >--brian
> >Opinions are mine, not Netscape's
> 
> tabs and newlines are acceptable content for article headers but they
> conflict with the format of xover.  as a temporary fix to mollify clients I
> replace all whitespace with true spaces.  this is functional but not
> preferable.  what are the solutions in practice?

If I recall, the OVER specification in the 977bis document does not
explicitly forbid newlines or tabs in the result set. 

The newlines should be escaped if they appear in header values, so those
should not be a problem. The tabs however, I can see causing problems.
Perhaps we should adjust the 977bis draft to indicate the existing tabs
in header values also be escaped since that is our delimter character.

--brian