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>>>>> "BR" == Brock Rozen <brozen@netvoyage.net> writes:
BR> But I'm interested, *what* exactly is going to be fixed or changed in
BR> regards to this?
Well, refer to Chan's message. If we write things to be as permissible as
possible, we have five approval formats:
1. Approved: in the headers.
2. Approved: as first line in the body, followed by headers and body of
approved message.
3. Approved: as first line in the body, followed by rest of message.
4, 5. Approved: somewhere in body, followed by headers and body or just
body.
Now #1 is great if you want to send a posting without being asked for your
approval. (Say, you're sending an announcement.) #2 is what approve uses.
#3 is for poor souls who have pitiful mailer software that won't let them
add to the header. #4 and #5 are for those whose mailers add junk, like
CC:mail.
Chan proposes disallowing #3. It's really only a convenience to keep
things from being bounced to the moderator if the submitter knows the
password and has a stupid mailer. I think it would be nice to allow it
just because, but only if it can be done cleanly. Thoughts?
I don't think #4 and #5 are worth it, because these mailers tend to do other
stupid things like indent every line in the body with tabs and other junk.
Unfortunately not allowing these actually prevents some users from running
lists at all, at least until they get better software. Disallowing #3 just
makes things inconvenient. It's not hard to allow either of these if you
don't worry about dealing with the other manglings these mailers commit,
but it makes the next point much worse.
Note that allowing both #2 and #3 introduces an ambiguity; how can you tell
that what follows is headers or body? To solve this I propose that instead
of Approved:, the string Approved-Body: be used in #3 to indicate that the
body is approved but that the original headers be kept. This is added
complexity, which isn't great since people with braindead software tend not
to know much about what's going on but I can't see another way around it.
We're adding capability here.
Now #4 and #5 just add more ambiguity; you have to scan for Approved:
first, which takes extra time (perhaps limit it to the first few lines)
_and_ you have to decide whether what follows is an entire message or just
a body. And if you find something that looks like Approved: asdfadfaf\n\n
but isn't supposed to indicate approval, you've mangled a good message.
So I propose ignoring #4 and #5, allowing #'s 1, 2, and 3, and using
Approved-Body: to indicate #3. This is just an idea; I haven't actually
done anything and would love to see a better solution. Please make
suggestions and argue about it at leisure; I'll be here for just a few more
hours but I archive all of this so I'll read it when I get back.
--
Jason L. Tibbitts III - tibbs@uh.edu - 713/743-8684 - 221SR1
System Manager: University of Houston High Performance Computing Center
1994 PC800 "Kuroneko" DoD# 1723
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