From: utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!salkind
Newsgroups: net.notes
Title: Bug in newsinput.c
Article-I.D.: cmcl2.8082
Posted: Fri Jul 23 10:48:46 1982
Received: Mon Jul 26 00:21:53 1982


Here is a rather serious bug in newsinput.c: if someone from the net
(in B news) replies to an article whose title ends with "- (nf)", the
notes system just throws the response away.  The problem is that newsinput
is expecting the article to be in "almost generic" format (those two lines
that start with a # at the beginning of the article).  When it doesn't see
a # newsinput decides the article is corrupted and throws it away.

I propose those two lines needed by notes be moved into the header field
of B news.  Then normal B news readers won't even see these lines.
Newsinput should also be changed to parse the B news format.  Then it
can even take advantage of the new References: field in B news to build
responses instead of base notes automatically.

I don't expect this to be that hard; I've already changed newsinput to
be able to parse the B news header.  I haven't had a chance to test things
out yet though; when (and if) I do I will let you all know.

We've found several other bugs in the notesfile system (mostly just minor
annoyances).  Should I report them in this group?  I haven't fixed that many.

By the way, everyone here who has tried notes seems to be quite pleased with
the system.  A big improvement over the B news interface.

	Lou Salkind