[NNTP] Re: New NNTP drafts approaching IETF Last Call

[Mark Crispin]

I found something right away:

The text in section 3.2:

    Note that texts using an encoding (such as UTF-16 or UTF-32) that may
    contain the octets NUL, LF, or CR other than a CRLF pair cannot be
    reliably conveyed in the above format (that is, they violate the MUST
    requirement above).  However, except when stated otherwise, this
    specification does not require the content to be UTF-8 and therefore
    it MAY include octets above and below 128 mixed arbitrarily.

seems silly to me.  Nobody sends UTF-16, UTF-32, UCS-2, or UCS-4 data in 
Internet protocol commands.  Viewed one way, it's a tautology; viewed 
another, it confuses contexts.

Furthermore, the second sentence, while obviously intended to maintain 
compatibility with the past, is short-sighted and will lead to 
compatibility problems forever.

Suggest the following rewrite:

    Note: implementations prior to this specification used octets other
    than CR, NUL, and LF arbitrarily; the character set of any octets
    greater than 128 is indeterminate with old servers.  Server
    implementations which comply with this specification (and thus
    advertise VERSION 2 in CAPABILITIES) MUST send UTF-8 strings in
    responses exclusively; and client implementations MUST treat any
    response string from a server which advertises VERSION 2 as being
    in UTF-8.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.