Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: C news compatibility (was Re: Patch dates or Patch Numbers)
Message-ID: <3536@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 19 Aug 89 04:12:39 GMT
References: <1989Aug9.164003.20669@utzoo.uucp> <6717@dayton.UUCP> <1989Aug18.102335.17269@utstat.uucp> <64125@uunet.UU.NET>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 29

In article <64125@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes:
>nonsense. The RFC was an attempt to document the behavior of Bnews.
>(The rfc is 4 years old and out of date.) Where the RFC and Bnews differ the
>behavior of Bnews should generall be considered correct.

That's not acceptable, Rick.  B news has evolved and mutated beyond
recognition, and in many places it's just plain broken.  Or do you
want to tell me that the B news behavior when handed the line

Distribution: world,!eunet

is correct?  Hardly; this was broken long ago, and you told me yourself
that this part of the code was so horribly complex and unwieldy you
don't dare touch it.  Must we duplicate B news bugs and all?

Just the same, you have a point.  The RFC only describes article
format and distribution and the meaning of header fields; it says
nothing about sys file formats, active file formats, command line
options, etc.  I thought the idea of C news was to make a small, fast,
tight system that could be dropped in in place of B news with minimal
changes.  There seem to be quite a few gratuitous changes, as you say.

It's not sufficient to meet the RFC to call yourself "backward compatible".
But if RFC1036 (? is this the number) is out of date, put out a revision
(for example, the "Supersedes:" header is a new feature).


-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck