15 Oct
2004
15 Oct
'04
11:36 a.m.
On Oct 15 2004, 18:30, Jules Richardson wrote:
mention
On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 10:36 -0700, Saddler, Chris
wrote:
> Returning to the original OT subject of this thread, where are the
rigid
rules of news
group message format defined?
Do you mean news (i.e. usenet), or email?
Email seems to be covered by RFC822, and news (the message format) by
RFC1036 - however a quick glance doesn't show either of them to anything about signatures. I think it's just
something of an unspoken
standard that '--' on a line by itself is a signature separator - but
as
far as I can tell there's nothing in the specs to
say that, nor the
actual purpose of the signature...
It's not "--" but "-- ", and must be immediately preceeded and
followed
by a newline. It appears in RFC2646 as a "convention" -- but it's
worth remembering that RFCs are not (mostly) standards either -- just
conventions. There's a document called "son of RFC1036" which is the
basis that almost all modern newsreaders follow, anmd you'll find the
sig separator described in there. "son of RFC1036" was written, mainly
by Henry Spencer, one of the original authors of RFC1036, because there
are some errors/inconsistencies in RFC1036 which needed addressed;
there's also a widely-used document called the GNKSA (Good NetKeeping
Seal of Approval) where it appears as section 15. Both of these were
the result of much discussion on Usenet and appeared because although
the IETF produced many drafts of a successor to RFC1036, none were ever
finalised.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York