Subject: Next steps - please concentrate on USEFOR again

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:32:48 +0200

Reviewing the discussion that has occured in July and August, two facts 
seem readily apparent:

- Most of the discussions reach no conclusion
- Most of the discussion is on USEPRO, not USEFOR

Given that our first task is to finish USEFOR, I'll ask people to hold off 
discussion on USEPRO issues until we've finished this round of USEFOR 
updates.

                        Harald

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:15:50 GMT

>discussion on USEPRO issues until we've finished this round of USEFOR 

Well there are some issues where both the USEPRO and USEFOR aspects need
to be considered together (the syntax and construction of the Path are a
case in point).

As for USEFOR, I have a couple of issues:

1. Son-of-1036 said that article bodies SHOULD NOT be empty (it broke some
implementations).

All our earlier drafts re-iterated that provision.

For some reason, it never got into USEFOR (though not including it was
never discussed). Please can we decide now whether or not be want to
retain that restriction?

2. I propose that the individual terms [reading, posting, followup] agent
and [injecting, relaying, serving] agent be defined in and used only in
USEPRO. And that in USEFOR the terms "user agent" and "news-server" be
used for those two groups (I have not checked in detail, but I think there
would be no problem changing USEFOR in that way). All the remaining
definitions are already pretty much the same now in USEFOR and USEPRO, and
would therefore appear only in USEFOR.

This idea has been mentioned eariler, and a few people expressed support.
It would make my job in USEPRO somewhat simpler, on account of the way I
currently introuce those terma as part of an overview of the general
architecture.

Please can we have tickets for these?

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

[email-masked]>; Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:16:54 -0400 (EDT)
To: [email-masked]
Xref: clerew local.usefor:22293
Newsgroups: local.usefor
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Next steps - please concentrate on USEFOR again
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:15:50 GMT
Lines: 46
Sender: [email-masked]

>discussion on USEPRO issues until we've finished this round of USEFOR 

Well there are some issues where both the USEPRO and USEFOR aspects need
to be considered together (the syntax and construction of the Path are a
case in point).

As for USEFOR, I have a couple of issues:

1. Son-of-1036 said that article bodies SHOULD NOT be empty (it broke some
implementations).

All our earlier drafts re-iterated that provision.

For some reason, it never got into USEFOR (though not including it was
never discussed). Please can we decide now whether or not be want to
retain that restriction?

2. I propose that the individual terms [reading, posting, followup] agent
and [injecting, relaying, serving] agent be defined in and used only in
USEPRO. And that in USEFOR the terms "user agent" and "news-server" be
used for those two groups (I have not checked in detail, but I think there
would be no problem changing USEFOR in that way). All the remaining
definitions are already pretty much the same now in USEFOR and USEPRO, and
would therefore appear only in USEFOR.

This idea has been mentioned eariler, and a few people expressed support.
It would make my job in USEPRO somewhat simpler, on account of the way I
currently introuce those terma as part of an overview of the general
architecture.

Please can we have tickets for these?

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:00:17 +0200

--On lørdag, august 13, 2005 22:15:50 +0000 Charles Lindsey 
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> In <[email-masked]> Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> Given that our first task is to finish USEFOR, I'll ask people to hold
>> off  discussion on USEPRO issues until we've finished this round of
>> USEFOR  updates.
>

#1101

> currently introuce those terma as part of an overview of the general

#1102
> Please can we have tickets for these?

Done.

---

From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 16:01:24 +0200

> would therefore appear only in USEFOR.

btw... the term "agent" occurs (in various contexts) 70 times in USEFOR.

---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:55:47 GMT

>btw... the term "agent" occurs (in various contexts) 70 times in USEFOR.

Yes, I ought to have examined the implications in more detail before
malking my proposal. I have now looked through the useage of the term in
USEFOR, and I find:

posting agent.

12 occurrences, of which 4 are in definitions that would disappear, and
the remainder could happily be replaced by "user agent".

reading agent.

4 occurrences, of which 3 are in definitions that would disappear, and the
remaining one could happily be replaced by "user agent".

followup agent.

3 occurrences, of which 2 would disappear, but the other, in 3.2.3,
would need some rewording (e.g. "a user agent, when constructing a
followup").

user agent.

5 occurrences, of which 1 would disappear, and the rest would remain
as-is.

injecting agent.

11 occurrences, of which 1 would disappear, 2 (in 3.2.1. and 3.2.14) would
need some rewording, and the remainder could happily be replaced by
"news-server" (though several of these in 3.2.14 might be affected by the
rewording).

relaying agent.

11 occurrences, of which 2 would disappear, and the remainder could
happily be replaced by "news-server".

serving agent.

10 occurrences, of which 1 would disappear, 3 (in 3.2.11) would need some
rewording, and the remainder could happily be replaced by "news-server".

news agent, netnews agent, or just agent.

15 occurrences, of which 5 (in 3.1.6) would be better as "news-server".

Syntactic element <user-agent>.

3 occurrences, to remain as-is.

I make that a total of 74 occurrences (but I was probably counting
slightly differently).

Note that "happily replaced" might well include a slight polishing of the
text for better readability - it is not just a matter of letting a text
editor have its way.

---

From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 03:10:00 +0200

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

  [Charles said:]
>> 1. Son-of-1036 said that article bodies SHOULD NOT be empty
>> (it broke some implementations).

>> For some reason, it never got into USEFOR (though not
>> including it was never discussed). Please can we decide
>> now whether or not be want to retain that restriction?

One of my (in)famous tests proving nothing at best:
<news://news.gmane.org/[email-masked]>

I could apparently post an article "without" body
resulting in an interesting Lines: 1

Checking what really happened, first my UA warned me:
"no text and no attachment, send anyway ?"  I clicked
"yes" and what my MUA did was this (ASCII screen shots):

=== one ===
Subject: #1101^M^J
^M^J
^M^J
=== two ===
Xref: news.gmane.org junk:341^M^J
^M^J
^M^J
=== end ===

Apparently my UA doesn't believe in really empty
bodies.  Next test, forcing it by editing "outbox",
see also <http://article.gmane.org/junk/343/raw>

Same effect, Lines: 1 

"Something" (I'm not sure what) added a 3rd CrLf
at the end.  Apparently that's like the "magic SP":

There "MUST" be a body, minimally CrLf.  And 2822
says "optionally", so that would go to appendix C
(differences from 2822).

Apparently 1036 doesn't talk about this, and its
default was 822... [LOL, 822 mentions '("headers")']
...also "optionally" (822 chapter 3.1)

Add this also to appendix B, differences from 1036 ?

Bruce would SCREAM.  Let's say that UAs generating
empty bodies without warning are stupid, but servers
or UAs breaking when they meet an article without
body are FUBAR.

Apparently s-o-1036 also doesn't require a body in 4.1
or 4.3.1, it only talks about "UAs SHOULD warn", okay,
that's USEAGE, not USEFOR.

Reject #1101 ?  Bye, Frank