The software as reviewed fails the Good Net-Keeping
Seal of Approval for Usenet Software for the following reasons :
- The Followup-To: field is not displayed by default. I was not able to
find a way for displaying it. It just seems to be ignored. This is a
major
bug,
- The Followup-To: field cannot be setup by the user when posting,
- When posting a followup, the subject is prepended with "RE:"
instead of the RFC-1036 required "Re:". This is a
major
flaw which makes the software non RFC-1036 compliant,
- The Followup-To: poster is not respected (normal Followup-To: is
respected). The software tries to post in the "poster" newsgroup,
- There is no Cancel possibility for own articles,
Though not required by GNKSA/U, some points could be improved :
- In followups and replies, the attribution line should give both the
real name and the email address of the original author,
- In followups and replies, the attribution line should give the Message-ID
of the original article,
- The "Post WYSIWYG" concept is not respected. See
note 12 for more details,
- The software should prevent obvious errors such as posting an empty article
or an article containing only quoted text.
Some useful features not listed in GNKS/A are already here :
- When posting a new article, a window pops up and warns the user that
the article may not appear immediately. IMHO this is a very good idea for
avoiding newbies mistakes, especially for people using dialup accounts. Of
course, this warning may be disabled,
- The Reply-To: field is checked for syntax validity.
Some useful features could be added :
- A user-configurable option for having standard commands? See
note 1.
- The bug mentioned in note 2 should be corrected.
This software may be downloaded (but, due to the above flaws, I absolutely
do NOT recommend this) at the following adresses :
- http://www.microsoft.com
and follow "Internet" links
- If someone is aware of mirror sites of of the availability on Microsoft's
FTP server (and then on mirror sites of it), please let me know!
Below is the detailed evaluation checklist :
Subject: The detailed evaluation checklist
Req Itm Sub- Item
rd? ## Description item OK? OK? Notes
Y 1 Display all essential header info NO
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 NO
Y e) display Reply-To if /= From: NO
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 NO 1)
Y 3 Implement cross-posting YES
Y allow user specification YES
Y cross-post (not multi-post) YES
Y 4 Change essential headers NO
Y change headers while editing body YES
Y change Subject YES
Y allow at least 70 chars in subject YES 2)
Y change Newsgroups YES
Y change Followup-To NO 3)
Y allow followup-to: poster NO
Y change Reply-To YES 4)
Y 5 Correct Subject headers in flwup/rply NO
Y a) prepend "Re: " (exactly!) NO
5)
Y b) preserve entire Subject YES
Y even subjects > 80 chars long YES
Y 6 Respect Followup-To NO
Y use to initialize Newsgroups: in flwup YES 6)
Y recognize and act on 'poster' NO 7)
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 8)
Y 9 Quotation and attribution YES
Y provide method YES
Y set off by prepend YES
Y attribution line YES
Y identifies author YES 9)
N gives message-id NO
Y 10 Subject is mandatory YES 10)
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
N belongs to the user NO 11)
Y 12 Must provide cancel NO
Y of own articles NO
Y *not* of others YES
N 13 Respect line length, and post WYSIWYG NO
N line brks shown are present when posted NO 12)
N do *not* post paragraph w/o line brks YES
N warn if body has lines > 80 chars NO
N external editor conforms N/A
N 14 Prevent obvious errors NO
N prevent posting empty article NO
N prevent posting only quoted text NO
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 : <http://www.cybe
rcom.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:
- The commands are New Message for Post
a new article, Reply to Group for Followup, Reply
to Author for Reply. This is not standard but probably more clear
for newbies,
- There seems to be a bug here : when the composition
window is narrower than a long subject, the text does not scroll when the cursor
goes to the right,
- Followup-To: is absolutely impossible to set up. This
is a major flaw,
- Reply-To: is controlled for syntax validity. It may
be changed via the Options window, not directly in the composition
window....as this is possible during composition, this is not IMHO a GNKSA/U
compliance flaw,
- The software prepends the subjects with "RE:"
when answering. This is not RFC 1036 compliant!
- Strange..... The Followup-To: field is not displayed,
may not be setup...but is respected...:-)
- Not respected. The software tries to post in the
"poster"
newsgroup. It does not display the error message sent by the
server. Then the user has absolutely no indication that his post failed,
- Seems to work. At least when installing the Microsoft
Mail client as News does not have an internal SMTP message composer,
- Only the name field, but not the email address of the
quoted author is given. GNKS/A does not give details about the proper method
for identifying the original author. I consider that it would be better
to give both the real name and the email address (perhaps making this a
configurable option?). The date is inserted in the attribution line, but in the
"national" format. Thus, with my french Windows 95, this lead to
something like "On samedi 20 Avril 1996, Joe User wrote :". Not very
nice...:-)
- The subject is absolutely mandatory
(nice feature!),
- This may be considered impossible on a single user
(no real system administrator) platform.
- Posting is NOT WYSIWYG. When one composes articles
with more than 75 characters in lines, no wrapping occurs in the composition
window (with default settings, the composition window is around 91 characters
wide). The article is wrapped when sent without warning the user. This leads two
problems :
- The user has no idea of what happened,
- The article may be messed up
The wrapping idea is basically a
good idea, but it is inappropriately implemented : the
composition window should be 75 characters wide by default and leave the users
the possibility of typing and sending articles with wider lines just by resizing
it, if they want to do so. The software should only warn the user about
Netiquette when he(she) posts such an article.
This evaluation has been conducted by Christian
Perrier