21-Apr-95 11:06:39-GMT,9627;000000000011 Received: from cony.gsf.de (cony.gsf.de [146.107.1.2]) by midway.uchicago.edu (8.6.10/8.6.4) with ESMTP id GAA00344 for ; Fri, 21 Apr 1995 06:06:27 -0500 Received: from cony.gsf.de by cony.gsf.de (8.6.4.2/Arcane-2.40) id NAA25243; Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:05:20 +0200 Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:05:20 +0200 Message-Id: <199504211105.NAA25243@cony.gsf.de> X-Sender: mue@fserv.wiz.uni-kassel.de X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: kenng@hk.super.net, rnewman@mit.edu, twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu From: mue@gsf.de (Bernhard Muenzer) Subject: GNKS/A: News Xpress 1.0b3 Cc: mue@gsf.de Newsgroups: news.software.readers,news.admin.misc Keywords: GNKS,NewsXpress Here is my Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval evaluation of News Express, version 1.0b3. This freeware MS Windows newsreader and mail utility was written by Ken Ng I have mailed copies of this to: Ken Ng , the author of News Xpress, Ron Newman , the author of GNKS/A, and Tim Pierce , so he can add this evaluation to his web page. ------------------------------------------------- Subject: The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval The Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval attempts to establish a standard for newsreader behavior on Usenet. For more information on the aims and requirements of the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval, follow this link to the original text: Tim Pierce has compiled all GNKS/A evaluations he could find at ------------------------------------------------- Subject: Results of my evaluation News Xpress is an excellent piece of software, which still contains a few bugs that are being discussed in news.software.readers (well, it's a beta version) and are not a subject of this evaluation. It is a full-featured newsreader for MS Windows with a very robust and intelligent threading mechanism. However, I have to note that: The software as reviewed fails the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for two reasons. 1) The Newsgroups:, Followup-To: and Reply-To: headers are not displayed by default (though the user can change this default setting) 2) It is possible to post with a syntactically invalid From: address Both shortcomings should be easily fixed; the first one by adding the missing headers to the default setting in the corresponding Config/Preferences field, and the second one by applying the checking mechanism which is already implemented in the Config/Setup option to the article headers From: and Reply-To: as well. I noticed two more problems that are not (yet) covered in the GNKS/A, but also affect good net-keeping: 3) Followups don't preserve the Distribution: header of the original article, and 4) The .signature file is appended without the standard "-- " delimiter line (this delimiter is however used by the quoting mechanism to avoid quoting the .sig of the previous poster). ------------------------------------------------- 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 NO 1) Y a) display author YES Y b) display subject YES Y c) display newsgroups list NO 1) Y d) display Followup-To list NO 1) Y e) display Reply-To if /= From: NO 1) 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 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 N contains any id mentioned in body 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 2) Y attribution line YES Y identifies author YES N gives message-id YES Y 10 Subject is mandatory YES Y do not post empty or provide YES Y allow change while editing body YES Y 11 Must provide valid From: header NO Y syntactically valid NO 3) N belongs to the user NO 4) 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 NO N external editor conforms N/A N 14 Prevent obvious errors ??? N prevent posting empty article YES N prevent posting only quoted text ??? 5) ------------------------------------------------- Subject: Notes to the checklist First a short description of what the columns in this checklist stand for: Reqrd?: 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 Description: Follow the above link to the original document for a more detailed description and an explanation of the rationale behind it. Subitem OK ?: 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 newsreader defaults to displaying the Subject:, Date:, From: and Organization: headers. The user can choose to display other headers in the "Config/Preferences" option, or view all headers using the "View/Full Headers" option. 2) Quoted lines are set off by a prepended "> ". If the user choses a limit on line length with the Config/Preferences option, a line break is forced if a line is too long. This often breaks a line into a properly quoted line, followed by a line without prepended quotation marker. Since this line break "feature" can be switched off by the user, I didn't mark it off as a critical failure for GNKS/A. 3) The user address can be changed using the Config/Setup option. The email address is checked for syntactical validity and will be used as default for the From: header. However, the user can also edit the From: and Reply-To: headers while composing a post, and these entries are not checked for validity. I successfully posted as "mue @ gsf. de". When I replied to this ill-formed email address, News Xpress removed the blanks and changed it to "mue@gsf.de". However, not every newsreader is that smart and the checking should be done before posting. 4) This is not feasible on a DOS platform anyways. 5) I could not determine whether it was News Xpress or the NNTP host that refused mostly quoted articles. I strongly suspect the latter. -- int m,u,e=0;float l,_,I;main(){for(;e<1863;putchar((++e>923&&952> e?60-m:u)["\n)ed.fsg@eum(rezneuM drahnreB"]))for(u=_=l=0;(m=e%81) <80&&I*l+_*_<6&&20>++u;_=2*l*_+e/81*.09-1,l=I)I=l*l-_*_-2+m/27.;