mark (02/28/83)
The article following this one is the text of the proposed standard for the interchange of messages among USENET sites. I'd like to emphasize that this is a draft proposal, NOT a final standard. It is being posted to the net in order to encourage comments and discussion. Please put all discussion either in this newsgroup (net.news) or mail it to me if you feel that is more appropriate. The reason for having a standard is that there are now five separate, full fledged implementations of news, all talking to each other, and up until now the only specification for how sites should communicate has been "whatever doesn't break the code". Needless to say, this is not very helpful to someone who is producing a new implementation. It just all needed to be written down. Please note that this is a standard for the interchange of news between computer systems, NOT a standard for the user interface. Requesting new features in the user interface is a different issue entirely. However, some improvements to the user interface require information to be present in the news as it's exchanged, thus fields like References and Organization. This standard does provide for some technical advances over B news 2.9. Headers are now compatible with RFC 822, making it possible (in theory) to use the same software to process both news and mail. (All mail will soon be in 822 format, since 4.2BSD and some Bell Labs version of mail will soon support it. At last - a common, documented UNIX mail format!) There are no longer any limitations on the length of newsgroup names. Replies will work properly, in spite of the route the article happened to reach you by (assuming you have an internet mailer on your system - if not the old method will continue to work as well as it ever did for a reasonable period of time [e.g., there are no plans to break it]). Several other new features exist, and you are encouraged to read the proposed standard for details. In suggesting changes to this document, please keep in mind that any new features added must be implemented by at least five people, so don't make them lightly. B news 2.10 supports the full standard as described here (well, almost), and will be made available once it has been thoroughly tested. (It's being alpha tested right now, and the release is estimated to be about a month off.) Also please bear in mind that, once a standard is adopted, it's pretty well cast in concrete. Enhancements are possible, by some sort of mutual agreement, but old features must continue to be supported essentially forever, so if you see a better way to do something, let's hear about it now! Also bear in mind that we have an existing network out there, and upward compatibility with sites running older software is very important - don't suggest that we all change to some totally incompatible format all at once. The standard itself is pretty long - 17 pages of nroff output. Hopefully nobody's /usr/spool will fill up on the way out. It has some overstriking in it - if this causes you problems, note that it's done with CR's, not BS's, so you can edit away all of the line after the first CR if your printer can't overstrike. The document is intended to be printed, not read at your CRT. I'll post RFC 822 in a few days unless I'm asked not to - I want to wait to try to avoid overflowing spool directories by posting two big things at once. Mark Horton