ietf-nntp NNTP and 16-bit charsets

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20010430120754.T88807 at demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:


>Russ Allbery said:
>> Okay, that means I was definitely right and we need to go the same
>> direction that RFC 3030 went for SMTP.  I've added this to the things to
>> look at doing after we get this RFC out.  Basically, NNTP will need to
>> introduce new commands for transferring binary articles, and while we're
>> at it we can just specify the data length up front.

I have just one problem with a binary extension to NNTP. An article
normally travels through many relayers. What happens if only some of them
support the extension? The last thing I would like to see is for relayers
en route to be given carte blanche to change the encoding from binary to
base64 and back. We have seen the terrible mess that has arisen from the
propensity of SMTP servers to do just that.

So I think it would have to be clear that articles encoded with CTE binary
would have to be rejected by (or not offered to) servers not supporting
the extension. This would be fine for cooperating subnets that agreed to
support the extension, but it would mean that articles would have poor
propagation, or would flood around some very circuitous routes, on the
wider Usenet. In time, of course, they would propagate better as the
extension became more widely implemented. Subject to that understanding,
the extension should, of course, be welcomed.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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