ietf-nntp Standardization of LIST OVERVIEW.FMT

Matthias Andree matthias.andree at gmx.de
Mon Apr 7 06:36:03 PDT 2003


Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:

>>>>>> "Matthias" == Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> writes:
>
>  Matthias> I'd rather do the opposite and make the protocol really
>  Matthias> 8-bit clean no matter what,
>
> this has been discussed in the past.
>
> The protocol cannot be made binary-clean as it stands because the
> article is required to end with a CRLF _which is part of the article
> data_. Fixing this requires pretty sweeping changes.
>
> The number of sites that will convert bare LF to CR LF is still
> extremely large, and outlawing it would have the effect of outlawing
> the traditional spool format, which is pretty much a non-starter.

Well, I hadn't thought of catering for local requirements, but it seems
this is still alive enough to care for it.

> There is a known issue with the sequences <non-CR> <LF> <.> <LF> and
> <non-CR> <LF> <.> <CR> <LF>; some servers (incorrectly) recognize
> these as terminators and others do not, which allows NNTP commands to
> be embedded in the article. In response to this there are now servers
> which will drop any article containing either of the above.

OK.

> So my preference is still to treat articles containing bare LF as
> ill-formed.

Which will effectively render RFC-2045 binary MIME unimplementable with
NNTP. (Makes me wonder if MIME needs a minimal-quoted implementation
that just quotes 0x00, 0x0a and 0x0d.)

-- 
Matthias Andree



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list