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* Re: GNKSA and Gnus
@ 1998-01-05 21:22 John Moreno
  1998-01-05 22:02 ` Lars Balker Rasmussen
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread
From: John Moreno @ 1998-01-05 21:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  Cc: Karl-Johan Noren

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





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com>] Re: GNKSA and Gnus
@ 1998-01-04 22:04 John Moreno
  1998-01-08  9:14 ` Russ Allbery
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread
From: John Moreno @ 1998-01-04 22:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
  Cc: Russ Allbery, ding, Karl-Johan Noren

Kai Grossjohann wrote:

>>>>> On Sun, 4 Jan 98, John Moreno said:
>
>  John> It is a attempt to have software FACILITATE using the correct
>  John> etiquette.  It means that software should provide a method
>
>I can see the advantage of having the option of marking a part of a
>message then hitting the reply button then the user agent inserting
>only that part as quoted text.  Rather than the user always getting
>everything at first and then having to cut away the rest.
>
>While this might be useful, I think it is not an important feature.

It's considered important only in the sense of having features that 
encourage the user to do the right thing - it is NOT a requirement for 
getting the GNKSA.

All of the 'Soft' requirement are features which while considered very 
good and useful and guides the user into correct behavior, may not be 
appropriate for all users or newsreaders.  For instance if most of your 
time on the net was spent in alt.fan.warlord this wouldn't be a very good 
feature for you.

-- 
John Moreno





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
* Re: [John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com>] Re: GNKSA and Gnus
@ 1998-01-04 21:45 Russ Allbery
  1998-01-04 22:27 ` John Moreno
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 23+ messages in thread
From: Russ Allbery @ 1998-01-04 21:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  Cc: phenix, Karl-Johan Noren

(Still cc'ing people who may or may not be on the mailing list.)

John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com> writes:

> 7c is a requirement that makes it compatible with son-of-1036,

This provision of son-of-1036 has been roundly rejected and dismissed as
horribly broken by the IETF working group forming the RFC 1036
replacement.  It is in no way an applicable news standard.  The current
inclination of that working group, by my reading of the conversation, is
to either require (as a MUST) that all news software handle References of
arbitrary size or set a cutoff in the 10KB+ range.

Furthermore, should Gnus comply with 7c, it would be in *violation* of
what's likely to become the new news standard, given that it will almost
certainly be recommended that References *never* be truncated if it can be
avoided.

> and is in there to acknowledge a problem with some SERVERS - i.e. ones
> that don't handle long lines.

Do you have some evidence of this being a problem in practice, rather than
theory?  INN certainly has no such problem that I'm aware of, at least in
a relatively recent version.  tin used to have a problem with large
overview files (larger than this extremely small limit -- about 4K as I
recall), but that bug has long since been fixed.

> Son-of-1036 specifies that it not be longer than 1000 octets including
> EOL (2 octets to allow for dos cr/lf),

Son-of-1036 is severely broken in this regard and should be ignored.

> Also note that this should allow any one message to have references
> going back between 30-40 messages.

Assuming airnews or Pine message IDs, about 15-20 is more accurate.  But
threading becomes easier the fuller the References header is.

> This seems, well, not to harsh to me - and can easily result in messages
> where the references header is much larger than the message itself.

Yes, it can.  But this is a meaningless optimization.  One should never
optimize without profiling; if this were actually a source of concern for
news bandwidth, then sure, I can see making provisions concerning it.
Even a brief inspection of article size will show that it's not, however.

> I'm sorry to hear that - if you have fixed 16c then the only thing
> that's out of place is 7c and this can result in either the users server
> not accepting the article or other servers not propagating their
> messages.

I find this highly unlikely, but I'm willing to be convinced that I'm
wrong if you have some evidence to support this statement.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 23+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1998-02-08 15:18 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 23+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
     [not found] <199712280107.UAA02498@mail.interpath.net>
1998-01-05 19:54 ` GNKSA and Gnus Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-05 20:31   ` Russ Allbery
1998-01-05 21:29     ` Selective quoting (was: Re: GNKSA and Gnus) Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-12 22:15   ` GNKSA and Gnus Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
1998-01-12 22:45     ` Russ Allbery
1998-02-02 18:25       ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
1998-01-12 22:48     ` Hrvoje Niksic
1998-01-13 15:58     ` PATCH: Don't quote signature (was: Re: GNKSA and Gnus) Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-14 23:57       ` Kim-Minh Kaplan
1998-01-15  0:15         ` Hrvoje Niksic
1998-01-15  8:52           ` Stig Sandbeck Mathisen
1998-01-15 13:55             ` Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-15 14:16               ` Lars Balker Rasmussen
1998-01-15 14:42                 ` Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-15 14:49                   ` Lars Balker Rasmussen
1998-01-15 15:36                     ` Per Abrahamsen
1998-01-18 13:16           ` Kim-Minh Kaplan
1998-02-08 15:18       ` Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
1998-01-05 21:22 GNKSA and Gnus John Moreno
1998-01-05 22:02 ` Lars Balker Rasmussen
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1998-01-04 22:04 [John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com>] " John Moreno
1998-01-08  9:14 ` Russ Allbery
1998-01-04 21:45 [John Moreno <phenix@interpath.com>] " Russ Allbery
1998-01-04 22:27 ` John Moreno
1998-01-04 23:58   ` Matt Simmons
1998-01-05 13:42     ` Robert Bihlmeyer

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