[ietf-nntp] Draft21.pre-1.txt

[Russ Allbery]

Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:
> Charles Lindsey said:

>> 8.6.1.2+38
>> |  will still be in multi-line format). The line consists of the article 
>> |  number, a space, and then the contents of the header (without the 
>> |  header name or the colon and space that follow it) or metadata item. 
>> 
>> What if there are multiple spaces after the colon (or even a TAB)?

> I don't know. We need feedback from implementers as to what is actually
> done.

My opinion:  Only the first space after the colon should be omitted.  Any
subsequent spaces or TABs should be included in the output of HDR
(although as described, TAB will be changed to space per the normal
HDR/OVER munging rules).

What INN actually does:  All initial whitespace is skipped.

I think that what INN actually does at present is unnecessary.  INN has a
habit of ignoring whitespace or losing whitespace in a few areas that I
think are gratuitous and really should be cleaned up.  I don't see any
reason to standardize that behavior in HDR when not standardizing it
allows the actual header contents to be returned more faithfully.

> [I tried a quick test - see articles <hdr-test.1.clive at demon.net> and
> <hdr-test.2.clive at demon.net> in demon.test - but something converted my
> leading spaces/tabs to a single space.]

INN probably did on posting.  It has a bad habit of doing that.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>