Subject: Re: #1101 empty body (was: Next steps - please concentrate on USEFOR again)

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 17:25:18 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]> writes:

>Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

>  [Charles said:]
>>> 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?
> 
>> #1101

>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.

But no, s-o-1036 is much stronger than that. Here are the relevant bits of
4.3.1:

   The body of an article MAY be empty, although posting agents SHOULD
   consider this an error condition (meriting returning the article to the
   poster for revision). A posting agent which does not reject such an
   article SHOULD issue a warning to the poster and supply a non-empty
   body. ...

     NOTE: ... However, some existing news software is known to react
     badly to body-less articles, hence the request for posting agents to
     insert a body in such cases.

     NOTE: A possible posting-agent-supplied body text (already used by
     one widespread posting agent ) is "This article was probably
     generated by a buggy news reader". ...

The corresponding text in the last of our article-drafts (and indeed in
all of them since I don't know when) was:

   The body of an article SHOULD NOT be empty. A posting or injecting
   agent which does not reject such an article entirely SHOULD at least
   issue a warning message to the poster and supply a non-empty body.
   Note that the separator line MUST be present even if the body is
   empty.

        NOTE: Some existing news software is known to react badly to
        body-less articles, hence the request for posting and injecting
        agents to insert a body in such cases. The sentence "This
        article was probably generated by a buggy news reader" has
        traditionally been used in this situation.

>Reject #1101 ?  Bye, Frank

I think I would like to hear some comment from Henry on this one. It may
be that the "some existing news software" referred to can now be
considered so ancient that we can ignore it - or maybe it can't.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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