In <3E563BCB(_dot_)904AAEB(_at_)oceana(_dot_)com> Ken Murchison
<ken(_at_)oceana(_dot_)com> writes:
I find it interesting, if not disturbing, that some members of the
usenet community seem to think that mail messages and usenet articles
are not the same thing. AFAICT, from reading the relevant standards,
writing server code for SMTP/LMTP/IMAP/POP3/NNTP, and everyday use, mail
messages and news articles both conform to RFC 2822 (RFC 1036 states as
much). The only differences that I'm aware of are the following:
- usenet puts a greater restriction on the headers (although still being
RFC 2822 compliant)
- mail messages are typically tranmitted over a 1-to-1 protocol (SMTP)
and news articles are typically transmitted over a 1-to-many protocol
(NNTP)
There are a whole lot of things required by RFC 2822 that just do not work
in news. Some examples:
1. You can't omit that SP after the ':' in a header.
2. The RFC 2822 syntax of the References-header breaks many threading user
agents.
3. Comments in unexpected places will break some existing software.
4. There are some features of the Message-ID which, if strictly followed,
would totally break the news relaying mechanisms or which, if we were
forced to accomodate them, would impose unacceptable performance
penalties. Of course, these quirky cases never arise in real life, but
theoretically they could.
The Usefor draft tries to correct a lot of these discrepancies, but it is
full of "you MUST accept this, but you SHOULD NOT generate it yet".
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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