Hi ALL:
Pls forgive me in advance.
I posted a reply today but did not see it.
I’ll like to see if new post will get posted (diff reply).
I’m on the mailing list.
I just noticed this problem just today.
kind regards -botp
Peña, Botp wrote:
Hi ALL:
Pls forgive me in advance.
I posted a reply today but did not see it.
I’ll like to see if new post will get posted (diff reply).
I’m on the mailing list.
I just noticed this problem just today.
kind regards -botp
You’re right,
www.ruby-talk.org/102230
… and not alone
Can anyone see this on their News reader?
I see it in ML mail only - No In-Reply-To: or References:, but valid mail.
www.ruby-talk.org/102074
Posted: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 12:40:27 +1000
···
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 11:40:36 +0900
From: “Mehr, Assaph (Assaph)” assaph@avaya.com
Reply-To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Subject: Re: A newbie question about path
To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org (ruby-talk ML)
Message-Id: 338366A6D2E2CA4C9DAEAE652E12A1DE166E09@au3010avexu1.global.avaya.com
X-ML-Name: ruby-talk
X-Mail-Count: 102074
daz
Hi –
···
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, daz wrote:
Peña, Botp wrote:
Hi ALL:
Pls forgive me in advance.
I posted a reply today but did not see it.
I’ll like to see if new post will get posted (diff reply).
I’m on the mailing list.
I just noticed this problem just today.
kind regards -botp
You’re right,
www.ruby-talk.org/102230… and not alone
Can anyone see this on their News reader?
I see it in ML mail only - No In-Reply-To: or References:, but valid mail.
www.ruby-talk.org/102074
The fix definitely hasn’t fixed everything; Austin Ziegler’s posts
still aren’t going through either 
It’s night-time in Germany but
Dennis is aware of it and hopefully will have some time to work on in
tomorrow.
David
–
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net
Hi –
Peña, Botp wrote:
Hi ALL:
Pls forgive me in advance.
I posted a reply today but did not see it.
I’ll like to see if new post will get posted (diff reply).
I’m on the mailing list.
I just noticed this problem just today.
kind regards -botp
You’re right,
www.ruby-talk.org/102230… and not alone
Can anyone see this on their News reader?
I see it in ML mail only - No In-Reply-To: or References:, but valid mail.
www.ruby-talk.org/102074
The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with “Re:” in them,
when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
then be unhappy because there’s no reference.
(See my subject-mangling of Botp’s reply message, which resulted in
the message reaching comp.lang.ruby.)
Dennis has several messages from me, leading up to this conclusion,
for when he gets up tomorrow 
So hopefully a fix will be
forthcoming soon.
David
seing this and previous msg from Botp on my newsserver.
But did not see the msg from Botp about String#% till dblack hacked
it.
···
il Thu, 3 Jun 2004 03:48:42 +0100, "daz" <dooby@d10.karoo.co.uk> ha scritto::
You're right,
www.ruby-talk.org/102230... and not alone
Can anyone see this on their News reader?
Hello David, ruby-talk, c.l.r.,
David A. Black wrote:
The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
then be unhappy because there's no reference.
My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
"Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.
This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be broken
- drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
are inconsistent
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
Btw: I won't be able to re-feed the messages which were not posted to
c.l.r. because my suspicion that they get rejected because of their age
became true. Sorry for that, but DAB will probably put them on a http-
accessible location.
Kind regards,
Dennis Oelkers
···
--
Dennis Oelkers | Webadministration | Zentraleinrichtung Rechenzentrum
TU-Berlin | EN-Gebaeude, K042 | Telefon: 030-314-25029
Key Fingerprint:
A6 7A B6 90 09 56 E8 32 02 40 6B 27 80 17 00 89 61 E7 CA 6F
"Dennis Oelkers" <oelkers@zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:c9nbnn$p3v$1@mamenchi.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE...
Hello David, ruby-talk, c.l.r.,
David A. Black wrote:
> The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
> when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
> apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
> then be unhappy because there's no reference.My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
"Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.
This is bad news...
This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be broken
That's my favorite. It would be even better if the GW could figure the
correct message id and insert that. But with these headers it seems quite
impractical.
- drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
are inconsistent
Not really a solution, is it?
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
I guess this is impractical since it sounds like this would rule out some
mail clients. People will not be happy about that.
Btw: I won't be able to re-feed the messages which were not posted to
c.l.r. because my suspicion that they get rejected because of their age
became true. Sorry for that, but DAB will probably put them on a http-
accessible location.
DAB as in http://www.dab.de/ :-)))
Regards
robert
[Dennis Oelkers <oelkers@zrz.TU-Berlin.DE>, 2004-06-03 16.18 CEST]
Hello David, ruby-talk, c.l.r.,
David A. Black wrote:
>The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
>when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
>apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
>then be unhappy because there's no reference.My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
"Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
I suggest another: if the message subject begins with "Re: " or "re: ", but
doesn't have a "References: " header, change the "Re: " to "RE: ".
If it has a "References: " header, but the subject doesn't begin with "Re: "
or "re: ", add "Re: " at the beginning.
I think that should satisfy RFC 850.
Hi --
···
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Dennis Oelkers wrote:
Hello David, ruby-talk, c.l.r.,
David A. Black wrote:
> The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
> when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
> apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
> then be unhappy because there's no reference.My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
"Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be broken
- drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
are inconsistent
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
I (reluctantly) would opt for the first one, if it's the likeliest way
to get all messages through. Maybe for messages with "Re:" but no
References: you could add X-Missing-Reference header or
something... so that some day if someone figures out a way to fix it
we can easily find them
David
--
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net
Hello David, ruby-talk, c.l.r.,
David A. Black wrote:
>The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
>when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
>apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
>then be unhappy because there's no reference.My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
"Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.
Arg, *bleeping* Microsoft *bleeping* us all again, by ignoring an
established standard, and instead inventing their own...
If they at least had the courtesy to add in the normal headers too,
it's not like it's rocket science, but no..
If someone could figure out what the *bleep* Thread-Index is, it might
be possible, with a lot of state on the gateway, to make an educated
guess at where it was supposed to be in the thread and fake the
appropiate headers.
An alternative would be storing the last message-id for each 'topic',
and just pretend that the MS mails was replies to that. It's cheaper
and and should usually gets the message in the right region.
I'm afraid that the suggestion to remove the 'Re' might actually screw
the only defence we have against the problem, subject matching. I
don't know about other MUAs, but Mutt tries to put the messages
somewhere 'right' in the threads, by using subject matching and
ordering by date. I donno if the munging might pose problematic
there.
This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be broken
I'm not sure how mutt would react to this. Or any other using the same
technique (I believe there is other clients doing the same thing).
- drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
are inconsistent
Not an option, I'd say.
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
Oh, a world without Outlook.. As much as I'd love to see that, it's
not an option either. Unless someone could come up with a gateway that
fixes posts from Outlook. Secondly, there's webmails out there that
has similar problems.
···
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 11:18:38PM +0900, Dennis Oelkers wrote:
--
Thomas
beast@system-tnt.dk
Is it possible to mirror the References header item as another header item,
and when References is missing and there is a "Re:" in the subject,
re-construct it from the other header item? It could be Outlook is
deliberately stripping off References and In-Reply-To, but won't strip off
another custom header, such as "X-Gateway-References".
Sean O'Dell
···
On Thursday 03 June 2004 07:18, Dennis Oelkers wrote:
David A. Black wrote:
> The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
> when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
> apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
> then be unhappy because there's no reference.
Hi,
At Thu, 3 Jun 2004 23:18:38 +0900,
Dennis Oelkers wrote in [ruby-talk:102281]:
This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be broken
- drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
are inconsistent
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
Though I'm not a ML maintainer, one possible solution is:
(1) revive subject tag (e.g. [ruby-talk:102281]).
(2) add following hook (originally posted in [ruby-list:27934])
to fml to construct Refereces: from the subject if necessary.
$HEADER_ADD_HOOK = q{
if (!$Envelope{'in-reply-to:'} && !$Envelope{'references:'} &&
$Envelope{'subject:'} =~ /^re:\s*\[ruby-\w+:(d+)\]/i) {
if (open(REF, "$DIR/$1")) {
my $mid, $ref, $inref;
while (<REF>) {
if (/^message-id:\s*(.+)$/i) {
$mid = $1;
} elsif (/^references:\s*(.+)$/i) {
$ref = $1;
$inref = 1;
next;
} elsif ($inref && /^\s/) {
$ref .= $_;
next;
} elsif (/^$/) {
last;
}
$inref = 0;
}
close(REF);
if ($mid) {
($ref = "References: $ref $mid") =~ s/\s+/ /g;
$body .= "In-Reply-To: $mid\n$ref\n";
}
}
}
};
···
--
Nobu Nakada
Hello Robert,
Robert Klemme wrote:
- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
threading would be brokenThat's my favorite. It would be even better if the GW could figure the
correct message id and insert that. But with these headers it seems quite
impractical.
This is not possible because in cases like this there is no real clue to
which thread/posting this is a reply to (without utilising human
intelligence or complex algorithms of course).
- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)I guess this is impractical since it sounds like this would rule out some
mail clients. People will not be happy about that.
The point is that the policy of ruby-talk is quite sleazy whilc
they're very strict for Usenet postings. People can send almost any garbage to the mailing list if they're subscribed to it and allowed
to post. In my opinion it is the right behaviour to drop any mail
which is not well-formed as soon as possible.
This leads to the conclusion that we'll either have some sort of
inconsistency between those two medias, or we would have to synchronize
the policies up to a certain point where those inconsistencies converge
against 0.
Kind regards,
Dennis Oelkers
···
--
Dennis Oelkers | Webadministration | Zentraleinrichtung Rechenzentrum
TU-Berlin | EN-Gebaeude, K042 | Telefon: 030-314-25029
Key Fingerprint:
A6 7A B6 90 09 56 E8 32 02 40 6B 27 80 17 00 89 61 E7 CA 6F
>
> My further investigations proved that this is really the problem. The
> symptoms are the same as with the first problem (I get a 441 - "Followup
> without a reference" - when posting the mail to the newsgroup), but this
> time the solution is non-trivial. The first case ("In-Reply-To" flag in
> header but not "References" flag) was solved by adding the missing flag
> by duplicating the message-id of the "In-Reply-To" flag. In this case
> both flags are missing. The MUA which was used by Austin Ziegler adds
> "Thread-Topic" / "Thread-Index" flags to the header which are supposed
> to solve the threading, but this is not applicable to Usenet.
>
> This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
> - Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
> message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
> threading would be broken
> - drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
> are inconsistent
> - my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
> want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
> so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
> on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
> too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)I (reluctantly) would opt for the first one, if it's the likeliest way
to get all messages through. Maybe for messages with "Re:" but no
References: you could add X-Missing-Reference header or
something... so that some day if someone figures out a way to fix it
we can easily find them
Couldn't it be solved simply by changing params.rb ...
module Params
# name of the news server
NEWS_SERVER = "news.zrz.tu-berlin.de"
# [...]
end
... such that it refers to a Usenet server rather than an NNTP host
which links with a Usenet news server ?
Can Dennis plug straight into the German Research Network (DFN.DE)
or is that what's imposing the rigid restrictions ?
I'm repeating, but if mirroring works for me through my news service
and not for him then all of these different header permutations are
permissible within Usenet.
I notice that DFN runs a service http://news.individual.net/server.html
which necessarily has safeguards. I was going to see if it was
possible for me to mirror through them but rule one states that the
Sender cannot be anyone except the user. Fair enough.
daz
···
From: "David A. Black" <dblack@wobblini.net>
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Dennis Oelkers wrote:
When a MUA is replying, it doesn't take the original mail and strip
out stuff, it constructs a new mail.
It is possible to use unique sender addresses from the mailing list,
and then use a DB to look up what message a mail was reply to, and add
the right headers, but it's rather a lot of work for one bad MUA.
*thinks a bit*
Actually, a general solution might prove popular, it's not like
ruby-talk is the only place that has the thread fallout problem.
As a side note, and I'm baseing this on a very small sample, I think
Thunderbird drops the In-Reply-To and References headers if you delete
all quoted material. My theory is that it does that to combat the
people-that-just-replies-to-an-old-thread-to-start-a-new-one-problem,
which is just about as irritating.
I haven't confirmed this though, so if anyone has more data...
···
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 05:01:37AM +0900, Sean O'Dell wrote:
On Thursday 03 June 2004 07:18, Dennis Oelkers wrote:
> David A. Black wrote:
> > The remaining problem seems to be subject lines with "Re:" in them,
> > when there are no In-Reply-To and References: headers. This
> > apparently makes the NNTP server flag the message as a followup and
> > then be unhappy because there's no reference.Is it possible to mirror the References header item as another header item,
and when References is missing and there is a "Re:" in the subject,
re-construct it from the other header item? It could be Outlook is
deliberately stripping off References and In-Reply-To, but won't strip off
another custom header, such as "X-Gateway-References".
--
Thomas
beast@system-tnt.dk
[snip perl]
Brilliant. Have the mailing list fix the messages. As far as I can
see, that should fix the problem, without bad sideeffects..
Now, you wouldn't happen to have a similar patch to Mailman. I could
use that. 
···
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 10:58:57AM +0900, nobu.nokada@softhome.net wrote:
Hi,
At Thu, 3 Jun 2004 23:18:38 +0900,
Dennis Oelkers wrote in [ruby-talk:102281]:
> This leads to the conclusion that we have three possible solutions:
> - Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
> message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
> threading would be broken
> - drop the message on the floor at the gateway => ruby-talk / c.l.r.
> are inconsistent
> - my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
> want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
> so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
> on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
> too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)Though I'm not a ML maintainer, one possible solution is:
(1) revive subject tag (e.g. [ruby-talk:102281]).
(2) add following hook (originally posted in [ruby-list:27934])
to fml to construct Refereces: from the subject if necessary.
--
Thomas
beast@system-tnt.dk
"Thomas Fini Hansen" <beast@system-tnt.dk> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:20040603194814.GE14028@saber.xen.dk...
Arg, *bleeping* Microsoft *bleeping* us all again, by ignoring an
established standard, and instead inventing their own...If they at least had the courtesy to add in the normal headers too,
it's not like it's rocket science, but no..If someone could figure out what the *bleep* Thread-Index is, it might
be possible, with a lot of state on the gateway, to make an educated
guess at where it was supposed to be in the thread and fake the
appropiate headers.An alternative would be storing the last message-id for each 'topic',
and just pretend that the MS mails was replies to that. It's cheaper
and and should usually gets the message in the right region.
> - my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
> want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
> so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
> on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're
posting
> too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
Oh, a world without Outlook.. As much as I'd love to see that, it's
not an option either. Unless someone could come up with a gateway that
fixes posts from Outlook. Secondly, there's webmails out there that
has similar problems.
You're bashing the wrong pig here. "Outlook" itself does no news (at
least older versions, I'm not fully up to date). Instead it delegated
news handling to "Outlook Express" - a whole differnt piece of software
(which I am using btw). "Outlook Express" does a nice job inserting
"References" headers, which you can verify with this posting.
MS does a lot of evil, but they are not always the ones to blame.
Kind regards
robert
"Dennis Oelkers" <oelkers@zrz.TU-Berlin.DE> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:c9ndoc$qa5$1@mamenchi.zrz.TU-Berlin.DE...
Hello Robert,
Robert Klemme wrote:
>>- Add an "In-Reply-To"/"References" flag to the header by using the
>> message-id of THAT mail => the message would appear on c.l.r., but
>> threading would be broken
>
>
> That's my favorite. It would be even better if the GW could figure
the
> correct message id and insert that. But with these headers it seems
quite
> impractical.
This is not possible because in cases like this there is no real clue to
which thread/posting this is a reply to (without utilising human
intelligence or complex algorithms of course).
That's what I figured.
>>- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
>> want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
>> so the only solution is that we establish identical posting
policies
>> on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're
posting
>> too. (ML-Maintainers? Any Comments on this one?)
>
>
> I guess this is impractical since it sounds like this would rule out
some
> mail clients. People will not be happy about that.
The point is that the policy of ruby-talk is quite sleazy whilc
they're very strict for Usenet postings. People can send almost any
garbage to the mailing list if they're subscribed to it and allowed
to post. In my opinion it is the right behaviour to drop any mail
which is not well-formed as soon as possible.
Well, but look at it from a user's perspective who is ignorant of the news
group: he has a mail client and obviously that mail client sends valid
mails (otherwise a whole lot other instances will reject his email). So
he's likely reluctant to change his MUA just because of ruby-talk. I know
people are peculiar when it comes to their favourite mail reader, news
reader, editor or whatever. Just look at the tons of
my-operating-system-is-better-than-yours flame wars...
This leads to the conclusion that we'll either have some sort of
inconsistency between those two medias, or we would have to synchronize
the policies up to a certain point where those inconsistencies converge
against 0.
I could live with thread inconsistencies. At least we have all messages
of a thread available - even if not properly sorted. As said, that's my
favorite solution.
Kind regards
robert
I wrote:
NEWS_SERVER = "news.zrz.tu-berlin.de"
.. such that it refers to a Usenet server rather than an NNTP host
which links with a Usenet news server ?
Yuurk, that's technical BS !!
What I mean is: is there access to any alternative host which
isn't as restrictive as (closer to Usenet than) the one in use ?
I'm wondering now what the "industry standard" software is
for news hosting and/or whether each service has OEM versions.
At the same time, I haven't the slightest interest :-?
daz
>>- my solution: as mua's are more or less allowed to do whatever they
>> want my fear is that we get more and more of such borderline cases
>> so the only solution is that we establish identical posting policies
>> on both the mailing-list host and the gateway/nntp host we're posting
>> too.
>
>The point is that the policy of ruby-talk is quite sleazy whilc
they're very strict for Usenet postings. People can send almost any
garbage to the mailing list if they're subscribed to it and allowed
to post. In my opinion it is the right behaviour to drop any mail
which is not well-formed as soon as possible.This leads to the conclusion that we'll either have some sort of
inconsistency between those two medias, or we would have to synchronize
the policies up to a certain point where those inconsistencies converge
against 0.
Hi Dennis,
You present a strong defence but I bring some grim prosecution evidence 
A news posting[1] by Sean Russell to c.l.ruby via Google which has an
'In-Reply-To:' but no 'References:' header (i.e. "not well-formed")
which made the trip from Sean's den around Usenet through the gateway
and out to the ruby-talk ML[2] like a Ferrari round Nurburgring.
The accusation is that your server at news.zrz.tu-berlin.de is applying
a filter to outgoing news messages which is of no help to the gateway.
I get a 441 - "Followup without a reference"
from RFC 977: Network News Transfer Protocol
···
From: "Dennis Oelkers" <oelkers@zrz.TU-Berlin.DE>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 3:49 PM
---------------------------------------------------------------
RFC 977 - Network News Transfer Protocol
---------------------------------------------------------------
2.4.2. Status Responses
4xx - Command was correct, but couldn't be performed for
some reason.
[...]
x4x - Posting
[...]
x8x - Nonstandard (private implementation) extensions
[...]
4.7.2. Responses
441 posting failed
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Followup without a reference" looks like a private implementation
message and error code 48x is provided for use with such extensions.
IMHO, the missing postings don't fail - they're denied.
Is there any way the g/way can be made exempt from these non-RFC checks ?
(e.g. ignore errors_like_that if source == gateway)
Your endurance is much appreciated.
daz
[1] The headers (before mirroring to ML):
Path: internal1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!
nntp.giganews.com!cyclone1.gnilink.net!gnilink.net!news.glorb.com!
postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail
From: "SER" <ser@germane-software.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
Subject: Re: CSV bug?
Date: 18 May 2004 06:51:12 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 9
Message-ID: <c8d4cg$q0b@odah37.prod.google.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: odah37.prod.google.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1084888273 29869 127.0.0.1 (18 May 2004 13:51:13 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 13:51:13 +0000 (UTC)
In-Reply-To: <40A9A7EB.3030208@keynauts.com>
User-Agent: G2/0.1
Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ruby:99924
[2] After mirroring to ML http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/100614