All GNKSA/U evaluations are compiled by Tim Pierce at <URL:http://http.bsd. uchicago.edu/~twpierce/news/>. My own evaluations are also summarised at <URL:http://www.mygale.org/ 11/bubulle/gnksa>.
WARNING : Debates about NS Communicator 4.0b1 have been very hot in early January 1997, about the ability of the software to send so-called "HTML-formatted" articles in news, by default. The present review is not focused on this subject but only on GNKSA/U criteria defined by Ron Newman in 1995
The software as reviewed fails to receive the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for Usenet Software (see <URL:http://www.freenix.fr /~freenix/controle> for a french translation of the Seal) for the following reason :
Though not required by GNKSA/U, some points could be improved :
This software may be downloaded at the following address :
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 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 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 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 2)
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
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 3)
Y set off by prepend YES
Y attribution line YES
Y identifies author YES 4)
N gives message-id NO
Y 10 Subject is mandatory YES
Y do not post empty or provide <none> YES 5)
Y allow change while editing body YES
Y 11 Must provide valid From: header
NO
Y syntactically valid NO
6)
N belongs to the user NO
7)
Y 12 Must provide cancel YES
Y of own articles YES 8)
Y *not* of others YES
N 13 Respect line length, and post WYSIWYG
NO
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 NO
9)
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
First a short description of what the columns in this checklist stand for:
Standard terminology Button text Menu item --------------------------------------------------- Post (new message) To: News No menu item? Followup Re: News Message/Reply/To Sender Reply (by mail) No button Message/Reply/To NewsgroupIMHO this is a quite good terminology which does not confuse the user. The "NO" in this item is just for strict GNKSA/U conformance. Anyway, this behaviour is not a required behaviour. On the other hand, it looks strange to me that no menu item exists for "Post a new article". The "Message/Compose Message" is for sending Mail messages (by default : this may be changed by changing the "To:" field to a "Newgroups" field in the composition window ). This is typical of the general confusion between mail and news in Netscape Message Center.