On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Dan Kohn wrote:
The big difference is that Usenet transport has almost since the very
start been fully 8 bit.
No, no, no. Usenet has always supported 8 bit message bodies, as HTTP
and BEEP have, and unlike SMTP. But RFC 1036 (and RFC 850 before that)
do *not* allow 8 bit headers...
Careful here. The two statements are not in conflict. Usenet transport
has never enforced this aspect of RFC 1036. The *transport software* has
been 8-bit-clean essentially from the start, simply because none of the
software authors saw any reason to add code to enforce an artificial 7-bit
restriction. (There were sometimes restrictions on specific items of data,
like newsgroup names, but typically not on headers in general.)
The 7-bit software issues occur only at the edges of Usenet, in gateways
to mail in particular, not in Usenet's own transport code.
Henry Spencer
henry(_at_)spsystems(_dot_)net