From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/88265 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Russ Allbery Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: nntp servers with multibyte group names? Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:44:39 -0800 Organization: The Eyrie Message-ID: <878t1eni88.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> References: <87tvk270sn.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> <87in0i5l6h.fsf@tullinup.koldfront.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1543365833 14231 195.159.176.226 (28 Nov 2018 00:43:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:43:53 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.2 (gnu/linux) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M36475@lists.math.uh.edu Wed Nov 28 01:43:49 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from lists1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.208]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1gRnxE-0003a4-W7 for ding-account@gmane.org; Wed, 28 Nov 2018 01:43:49 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by lists1.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1gRnyK-0001TG-IT; Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:44:56 -0600 Original-Received: from mx2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.33]) by lists1.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1gRnyB-0001QL-0p for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:44:47 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx2.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:128) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1gRny8-00066F-Pm for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Tue, 27 Nov 2018 18:44:46 -0600 Original-Received: from haven.eyrie.org ([166.84.7.159]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1gRny7-00088c-Ia for ding@gnus.org; Wed, 28 Nov 2018 01:44:43 +0100 Original-Received: from lothlorien.eyrie.org (96-90-234-101-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net [96.90.234.101]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ADH-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by haven.eyrie.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 351D7118372 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:44:41 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: by lothlorien.eyrie.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 20EC4B42824; Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:44:40 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <87in0i5l6h.fsf@tullinup.koldfront.dk> ("Adam =?utf-8?Q?Sj?= =?utf-8?Q?=C3=B8gren=22's?= message of "Tue, 27 Nov 2018 21:18:14 +0100") X-Spam-Score: -4.9 (----) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:88265 Archived-At: Adam Sj=C3=B8gren writes: > According to RFC 3977 (Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)): > "o Although this specification allows UTF-8 for newsgroup names, they > SHOULD be restricted to US-ASCII until a successor to RFC 1036 > [RFC1036] standardises another approach. 8-bit encodings SHOULD > NOT be used because they are likely to cause interoperability > problems." > - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3977#section-10 For a bit of background here, non-ASCII newsgroup names mostly work, and are even used in some areas, but we saw a few instances of strange behavior in some experiments. However, putting raw UTF-8 directly into the Newsgroups header breaks compatibility with RFC 5322 (email), which prohibits non-ASCII characters in headers. Email would say that you should MIME-encode those names, but that will definitely break all Usenet software, which assumes that Newsgroups are byte strings that don't require any further interpretation. (And some of the encoding characters are invalid in newsgroup names, I believe.) We weren't able to find a good reconciliation of that conflict before the IETF working group ran out of steam. So you can probably just use raw UTF-8 directly in newsgroup names with a local server, but expect some strangeness with some clients, and you are (for whatever it's worth) breaking compatibility with the email standards by doing so. --=20 Russ Allbery (eagle@eyrie.org)