ietf-nntp Re: DRAFT Basic-Format v0.2

[Brian Kantor]

I agree that Usenet news should some day be binary clean, unless we find a
better mode of bulletin and discussion distribution and display.  I hope we
do.

NNTP is the wrong protocol to do it with; it was specifically designed for
simple ASCII text, and was modelled after RFC821/822, including by
implication the various line limits and character codes mentioned there AND
in common practice.

Early Internet protocol RFCs assumed the reader/implementor had some degree
of experience and knowledge of the prevailing practices on the network at
the time.  Few of them attempted to document a closed universe in its
entirety.

We left that to the ISO.
	- Brian