ietf-nntp Charles's nitpicks

Charles Lindsey chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk
Mon Dec 31 06:08:13 PST 2001


In <20011229155302.I93705 at demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:


>Charles Lindsey said:
>> P12-2	to not require -> not to require
>> 	{split infinitive}

>What is wrong with a split infinitive ? This is English, not Latin.

If you split them, you annoy some people. If you don't split them, you
annoy nobody.

>> P36+1,2	to immediately determine -> immediately to determine
>> 	{split infinitive}

But I agree with Andrew that a better fix would be "to determine
immediately".


>> P15-18	503 -> 502
>> 	{I think so; certainly not 503}

>Which command is this ?

LIST EXTENSIONS


>> P22+6	From: nobody at whitehouse.gov (Demo User) ->
>> 	From: "Demo User" <nobody at whitehouse.gov>
>> 	{The former usage is now deprecated both in RFC 2822 and in
>> 	USEFOR; you need to scan for all occurrences of "Demo User" to fix
>> 	it}

>Could we also switch to a ".invalid" address ?

Actually no. ".example" is the proper way to do it (and USEFOR
consistently does so).


>> P46+7	211 2000 3000234 3002322 -> 211 6 300234 3002322
>> 	{since you give only 6 groups in the example, the "2000" is hardly
>> 	realistic; moreover 2000 is impossible given those high/low
>> 	watermarks}

>Um, 3002322-3000234 = 2088, according to my calculator.

Ah! The dangers of doing arithmetic in one's head :-) .
But I still think it should be '6'.

 Charles> P53-1 It needs to say what timezone is to be used in the
 Charles> DATE response.

Andrew> DATE always returns UTC.

Then it needs to say so.

>> P55-20	It says there is no way to establish the server's timezone. This
>> 	would not be correct if the DATE command used the server's local
>> 	time.

>Only true if you (a) know this, (b) know the current time in UTC, and (c)
>know that the result from DATE is reasonably accurate.

Within 30 minutes would be accurate enough. But it seems that DATE is
supposed to give you UTC, so the question no longer arises. The only real
problem is that NEWNEWS uses server's local time by default which is
stupid, but too late to change it now.

>[Various syntax issues]

>I thought we were ignoring the syntax section until the rest of the
>document was about done.

I had hoped that we "were about done". Anyway, now they are pointed out,
they may as well be fixed. And the syntax of msg-id is a serious matter.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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