Special note for Gravity evaluation : this evaluation was quite different from others I already conducted. In early May 1996, I was contacted by a representative of MicroPlanet who asked me if I would make a "prereview" of the software they were preparing. After some hesitation, I accepted with the back idea that GNKSA/U main goal is to help software authors in improving their products so that they may be Usenet friendly.
Thus, during 1 1/2 month I had several prereleases of Gravity for evaluation. I have here to mention that I was very impressed by the quick modifications made by people at MicroPlanet for making their software GNKSA/U compliant. The first version I had for reviewing was non compliant with points that are often debated by software authors (default display of essential headers, syntax checking of email addresses, etc.). In a few weeks, MicroPlanet made their software fully GNKSA/U compliant (see below) by modifying it according to my remarks.
This is my personal feeling that this is a very good example of efficient collaboration between commercial companies and Usenet volunteers with the goal of having a cleaner Usenet. I sincerely hope that other software vendors consider this approach for the benefit of everyone.
Well, now to the evaluation!

All GNKSA/U evaluations are compiled by Tim Pierce at <URL:http://http.bsd. uchicago.edu/~twpierce/news/>.

The software is qualified to receive the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for Usenet Software (see <URL:http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal>) . I congratulate people at MicroPlanet for this.

All necessary and suggested features are already there. The software even defaults to 8-bit characters postings (see recent (in June 1996) threads in news.software.readers...:-)). It should maybe insert the appropriate MIME headers in such case :

Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

One nice thing : the software does never post articles with QP encoding. This is a debated subject where my own opinion is that news software should not send Quoted-Unreadable but should have QP decoding when reading ("be liberal when receiving and conservative when sending"). I would thus suggest that Gravity properly decodes QP.

Some useful features not required by GNKSA/U are included. I mention them as I think that other software should implement these :

1. The Reply-To: field is syntactically checked,
2. The way Gravity handles the difficult problem of "Post WYSIWYG and 80 character lines" seems to be to be nearly perfect. I would encourage news software authors (mainly those writing for GUI environments) to have a look at it,

This software may be found at <URL:http://www.microplanet.com>.

Below is the detailed evaluation checklist :

   
Req Itm                                          Sub-    Item   
rd? ##  Description                            item OK?   OK?     Notes   
   
Y    1  Display all essential header info                 YES
  Y       default is to display                   YES                
  Y       a) display author                       YES   
  Y       b) display subject                      YES   
  Y       c) display newsgroups list              YES   
  Y       d) display Followup-To list             YES
  Y       e) display Reply-To if /= From:         YES
   
Y    2  Provide standard commands                         YES  
  Y       clear                                   YES
  Y       separate                                YES 
  Y       a) post a new article                   YES
  Y       b) post a followup article              YES
  Y       c) reply by email                       YES              
  N       use standard terminology                YES
   
Y    3  Implement cross-posting                           YES   
  Y       allow user specification                YES
  Y       cross-post (not multi-post)             YES  
   
Y    4  Change essential headers                          YES
  Y       change headers while editing body       YES   
  Y       change Subject                          YES   
  Y       allow at least 70 chars in subject      YES
  Y       change Newsgroups                       YES   
  Y       change Followup-To                      YES 
  Y       allow followup-to: poster               YES
  Y       change Reply-To                         YES
   
Y    5  Correct Subject headers in flwup/rply             YES  
  Y       a) prepend "Re: " (exactly!)            YES
  Y       b) preserve entire Subject              YES   
  Y          even subjects > 80 chars long        YES   
   
Y    6  Respect Followup-To                               YES  
  Y       use to initialize Newsgroups: in flwup  YES 
  Y       recognize and act on 'poster'           YES                 1)          
  
Y    7  Followups contain References                      YES   
  Y       contains message-id of original         YES   
  Y       never truncate individual message-id    YES
  N       contains three Refs from original       YES   
  N       contains entire Refs of original        YES   
   
Y    8  Direct email reply to Reply-To                    YES
   
Y    9  Quotation and attribution                         YES  
  Y       provide method                          YES   
  Y       set off by prepend                      YES               
  Y       attribution line                        YES                 2) 
  Y         identifies author                     YES               
  N         gives message-id                      YES               
   
Y   10  Subject is mandatory                              YES         3) 
  Y       do not post empty or provide <none>     YES              
  Y       allow change while editing body         YES   
   

Y   11  Must provide valid From: header                   YES
  Y       syntactically valid                     YES                 4) 
  N       belongs to the user                     NO                  5)
   
Y   12  Must provide cancel                               YES   
  Y       of own articles                         YES
  Y       *not* of others                         YES               
   
N   13  Respect line length, and post WYSIWYG             YES   
  N       line brks shown are present when posted YES
  N       do *not* post paragraph w/o line brks   YES   
  N       warn if body has lines > 80 chars       YES                6)                   
  N       external editor conforms                N/A   
   
N   14  Prevent obvious errors                            NO          
  N       prevent posting empty article           YES                7)
  N       prevent posting only quoted text        YES                7)
   

Notes to the checklist

First a short description of what the columns in this checklist stand for:

Req?:

A "Y" means that the item or subitem is a MUST for the software in order to get the Good Net-Keeping Seal Approval.

ITM ##:

This is the item number in the GNKS document : <URL:http:// www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal>

Description:

Follow the above link to the original document for a more detailed description and an explanation of the rationale behind it.

Subitem OK ?: and Item OK?:

If the item is required, this is marked "YES" if all _required_ subitems are ok. If it is _not_ required, it is marked "YES" if if _all_ subitems are ok.

Notes:

These are given below:

1. The software asks if the user wants to "respect" the Followup-To: poster with the default to respect it. IMHO this is the best solution.
2. The default attribution line mentions the original author's email adress and the Original Message-ID. This is IMHO enough (maybe the original author's real name would be good also?),
3. The post is impossible with an empty subject,
4. I tried all styles of bogus email addresses I could imagine. Gravity always refused them. This check extends to the Reply-To: field when necessary.
5. This may be considered impossible on a single user (no real system administrator) platform.
6. Gravity seems to have found the nearly perfect way for solving this difficult problem. The default is having word wrap occur at 78 characters (maybe a little lower would be better). Then all GNKSA/U requirements are satisfied. The only way of posting an article with longer line is to temporarily change this settings to a higher value. MP News warns then the user (for each posting!) about articles with more than 80 character long lines being difficult to read.
7. Posting with an empty text is completely impossible. When posting an article containing only quoted text, the user is simply warned.