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 16:00:44 +0100 To: mosaic-w@ncsa.uiuc.edu From: Christian Perrier Subject: GNKS/A evaluation of NCSA Mosaic for Windows version 2.1b1 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: 6786 Please find below the results of my evaluation of NCSA Mosaic for Windows version 2.1b1 when used as a newsreader, 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 NCSA Mosaic for Windows (95) version 2.1b1 The software as reviewed fails the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval for the following reasons : 1) No display of some essential headers. 2) Several essential headers cannot be changed 3) No respect of Followup-To header (this makes the software non RFC-1036 compliant!) 4) Does not respect reply-to header (this also makes the software non RFC-1036 compliant!) 5) Does not make syntax check on From: header 6) Does not allow the cancel of own articles Due to this great number of flaws and mainly because of the non respect of RFC-1036, I conclude that this software may not be called a newsreader. ------------------------------------------------- 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 YEs 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 Y change Newsgroups YES Y change Followup-To NO 1) Y allow followup-to: poster NO 1) Y change Reply-To NO 1) 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 NO Y use to initialize Newsgroups: in flwup NO Y recognize and act on 'poster' NO 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 NO Y 9 Quotation and attribution YES Y provide method YES 2) Y set off by prepend YES Y attribution line NO Y identifies author NO N gives message-id NO Y 10 Subject is mandatory YES 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 N belongs to the user NO 4) 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 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 NO N prevent posting empty article YES 3) 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) This is not possible to setup these anyway! 2) The original text is not quoted by default (but this is not required by GNKS/A). The user may "include original article" in the text by clicking a button. Then, THE WHOLE ARTICLE (with headers...) is included. Not very nice..:-( 3) Mosaic does not post until either subject or body are filled. Nothing is used for warning the user. Mosaic just waits. This could imho be handled better..... but the result is acceptable. 4) This may be considered impossible on a Dos platform. -- Christian Perrier, DI/CCI ONERA, BP72, 92322 Chatillon Cedex FRANCE Office: +33-1-4673.4438 Fax: +33-1-4673.4150