All GNKSA/U evaluations are compiled by Tim Pierce at
<URL:http://http.bsd.
uchicago.edu/~twpierce/news/>.
The software is still qualified to receive the Good Net-Keeping
Seal of Approval for Usenet Software (see
<URL:http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/Good_Netkeeping_Seal>)
. Note that version 1.00 was already GNKSA/U compliant
Some useful features not required by GNKSA/U are included. I mention them as
I think that other software should implement these :
- The Reply-To: field is syntactically checked,
- The way Gravity handles the difficult problem of "Post WYSIWYG and 80
character lines" is nearly perfect. Version 1.01 even enhances 1.00
behaviour (the quoted lines are not badly wrapped now),
Some non GNKSA/U-requested features should IMHO be added :
- The software should insert the appropriate MIME headers (Mime-Version:
and Content-Type:) when posting with 8-bit characters included,
- Gravity should properly decode Quoted-Printable (but NOT
post
QP!) as well as encoded headers (things like "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?anim=E9?=
").
This software may be found at <URL:http://www.microplanet.com>.
Below is 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 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 1)
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 2)
Y identifies author YES
N gives message-id YES
Y 10 Subject is mandatory YES 3)
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 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 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 YES 6)
N external editor conforms N/A
N 14 Prevent obvious errors YES
N prevent posting empty article YES 7)
N prevent posting only quoted text YES 7)
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 :
<URL:http://
www.cybercom.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 software asks if the user wants to
"respect"
the Followup-To: poster with the default to respect it. IMHO this is the best
solution.
- The default attribution line mentions the original
author's email adress and the Original Message-ID. This is IMHO enough (maybe
the original author's real name would be good also?),
- The post is impossible with an empty subject,
- I tried all styles of bogus email addresses I could
imagine. Gravity 1.00 always refused them. This check extends to the Reply-To:
field when necessary. I have here to mention that MicroPlanet people first made
thick check less strict in the beta program (adresses such as
bubulle.@bubhome.frmug.fr.net were accepted) but very quickly accepted to bring
back 1.00 behaviour when tehy were told that this would make the software non
compliant. I consider this as a sign that GNKSA/U compliance is a major concern
for them.
- This may be considered impossible on a single user (no
real system administrator) platform.
- Gravity seems to have found the nearly perfect way for
solving this difficult problem. The default is having word wrap occur at 78
characters (maybe a little lower would be better). Then all GNKSA/U requirements
are satisfied. The only way of posting an article with longer line is to
temporarily change this settings to a higher value. MP News warns then the user
(for each posting!) about articles with more than 80 character long lines being
difficult to read. Version 1.00 had only one problem : the quoted lines were
badly wrapped when coming over 80 characters. This has been modified in version
1.01. Quoted lines are now never wrapped.
- Posting with an empty text is completely impossible.
When posting an article containing only quoted text, the user is simply
warned.
This evaluation has been conducted by Christian
Perrier