From twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu Fri Feb 9 10:45 CST 1996 X-Sender: perrier@alix X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 09 Feb 1996 16:41:19 +0100 To: kenng@hk.super.net From: Christian Perrier Subject: GNKS/A evaluation of News XPress 2.0 beta#0 Cc: rnewman@mit.edu, twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu Resent-To: twpierce@bio-3.bsd.uchicago.edu Resent-Date: Fri, 9 Feb 96 10:44:46 CST Resent-From: Tim Pierce Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 7584 Hi Mr Ken, Please find below the results of my evaluation of News XPress 2.0 beta#0, according to Ron Newman's Good NetKeeping Seal of Approval (look at http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal for more details). A similar work has been done for other news reading software (see Tim Pierce home page at http://http.bsd.uchicago.edu/~twpierce/news/index.html) and feedback from you would be appreciated. This evaluation will be placed by Tim on his page, preferrably after receiving some input from NCSA. -----------cut here------------------- Subject: Results of my evaluation of News XPress 2.0 beta#0 for Windows 95 The software as reviewed fails the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for the two following reasons : 1) Essential headers are not all shown with the default settings. Though it is VERY easy to correct, this is a lack according to GNKS/A 2) The validity of email adresses if slightly imperfectly checked. The syntax validity is checked but lacks of '. immediately after @' check. The reality of email address belonging to the user seems impossible to achieve on a Dos platform. Some other points could slightly be improved : 1) Editing some essential headers (followup-to/reply-to) while composing an article is not possible by default. 2) Warn the user about Netiquette when using margins over 80 characters (the defaults settings are OK) 3) Prevent posting only quoted text. Considering that the two flaws are relatively minor, I hope that they will be fixed so that News Xpress becomes a GNKS/A compliant software (actually no Windows-based software is fully GNKS/A compliant. WinVN, Netscape and NX are very near of this. ------------------------------------------------- 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 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 2) 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 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 Y identifies author YES N gives message-id YES Y 10 Subject is mandatory Y do not post empty or provide YES 3) Y allow change while editing body YES Y 11 Must provide valid From: header NO Y syntactically valid NO 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 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 6) N external editor conforms N/A N 14 Prevent obvious errors NO N prevent posting empty article YES N prevent posting only quoted text NO ------------------------------------------------- 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) All headers may be shown when setting up File/Options/Article/Display headers. 2) Not by default. Default options only allow Subject. For having the possibility of editing all headers, user has to setup File/Options/Compose/Post headers. GNKS/A does not require this to be present by default so this is not considered to be a flaw. 3) Mandatory (nice!) 4) The user address can be freely changed in a configuration menu. But any attempt to post with a syntactically invalid address (no @, no '.' after @) gives an error message. Unfortunately this check incorrectly accepts adresses with a '.' immediately following the @. This could probably easily be fixed. 5) This may be considered impossible on a Dos platform. 6) The default settings is 78 characters for wrapping. The software allow to change this but the user is never warned that this does not conform with Netiquette -- Christian Perrier, DI/CCI ONERA, BP72, 92322 Chatillon Cedex FRANCE Office: +33-1-4673.4438 Fax: +33-1-4673.4150