mark lewis wrote in a message to Ramon van der Winkel:

 RvdW> WaterGate contains a lot of correcting code for dates. Both
 RvdW> for FidoNet and for RFC.

 ml> pardon me but... WHY!!!!!!!???????????????

 ml> it's not up to you to wipe other people's arses is it? if
 ml> they don't know that they have dingle berries hanging from
 ml> their arse, then they won't ever learn to wipe thier arse
 ml> clean but will instead rely on someone else to wipe it for
 ml> them. this is beneficial to the network?? no way... it keeps
 ml> the dingle berries hanging about in the way and prevents
 ml> forward motion to the future... 

 ml> help stomp out dingle berries and hand holding... DO NOT
 ml> code around other people's bugs!!!

I don't agree with you. Let's differentiate between forwarding a message
and originating a message. I am talking about the latter case, which
includes gating.

If I export a message from a message base and the date format is wrong then
I correct it, instead of sending out the same wrong date format into the
world and perhaps have other programs crash on it.

Same thing with the gateway: you really don't want all those spaces added
by programs like Pegasus mail. Instead, I delete those spaces and give you
in Fidonet a nice and clean address, or date, or whatever.

There are "standards" that tell a programmer how create
compatible messages. I think there is nothing wrong with making sure a
message complies to these standards. Who would get the blame if WaterGate
sends an non-compliant message into a network?..

And there is the issue of detecting a problem, complaining about it and
leaving it as it is. Other programs might not get updated that fast and you
would end up with endless complaints about a problem and no fix. I think
people get great service this way!

Ramon

--- WtrGate+ 0.92.p2-d gamma sn 1