Re: GNKSA and Gnus

[John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com>]

Russ Allbery wrote:

>Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
>
>> I often have to manually edit the references line when posting followups
>> in gnu.misc.discuss in order to make INN accept it.  I guess it happens
>> in gnu.misc.discuss because
>
>> 1) The threads there are very deep.
>> 2) There are a high fraction of Gnus users, thus none of the posters
>>    software will restrict the header.
>
>I stand corrected.
>
>> ##  Maximum size of a single header.
>> #### =()<MAXHEADERSIZE          @<MAXHEADERSIZE>@>()=
>> MAXHEADERSIZE           1024
>
>I believe this only affects headers which are not continued.  If one uses
>continuation lines, headers can be much larger.  (Or that at least is my
>understanding.)  Keep in mind that the version of Gnus that I'm using
>still wraps References using continuation lines; I think Lars took that
>out at some point?
>
>It sounds like either the header wrapping code needs to be put back in or
>Gnus needs to shorten the Reference headers it generates, in the short
>term.  In the long term, I expect the new news RFC to require References
>headers not be truncated.

It's going to have to either require or allow it to be truncated at some 
point - otherwise you'll have references lines that grow infinitely long. 
 I know of several threads that are more than a year old - I hate to 
think how long they would be if software didn't truncate the header.

Approximately 1k REALLY is the current expected behavior.  And if 
newsreaders don't do it, servers and users will.  It is also a attempt to 
make the standard larger than what might otherwise be settled upon - 
after all assuming that all of the articles are there threading can take 
place with just one, and if articles are missing keeping only 5 or 6 back 
references is enough for normal situations.  And I can't count the number 
of users (most using TIN) who I've chided for deleting it entirely - I 
end up telling them that since they feel they must cut it, to at least 
leave in the last reference.  Unfortunately I often get the reply that it 
is simply easier to cut it all out than to try to edit it.

-- 
John Moreno