BL> Yair... but that breaks the standard, doesn't it?

AWL> Not as drasticly as 

 PE> It doesn't

 PE> The answer is "No".

Sorry, you are right. I should spend more time thinking and less typing...

AWL> changing the length of a fixed length field (or the 
AWL> layout of a bitfield)...

 PE> The From/to/subject are not fixed length fields in the PKT 
 PE> format.  They do have a maximum length though.

Point. Aren't they fixed legnth in the FidoBBS source? (I remember reading
chunks of it once...)

AWL> I'm not sure what would happen on most sytems if you sent a 
AWL> message with a file request flag set...

 PE> I think FTS-1 mailers will acknowledge it.

Probably only in an FTS-1 session. I wonder how many would actually get the
file and transmit it?

BL> "There may be a space before data, or not. Newline can be 
BL>  or ."

AWL> But that means that a person reading it may assume it is OK 
AWL> to not put in a space, and that  is OK. Both are 
AWL> used but are being discouraged. The standard has to both 
AWL> define what you should send, and what you can expect to 
AWL> recieve.

 PE> Yeah.

I'd also like to see footnotes/endnotes explaining some of these things, so
people are clear on past confusion (and know when someone else's doco is
*wrong*)...

BL> That is all your paragraph says, and it is clearer, 
BL> shorter. If you must explain, do it in a separate note.

BL> You did a similar thing with your ^a fiasco, calling the 
BL> majority "exceptions to the rule". Standards don't have 
BL> exceptions. You say it, and it is so.

AWL> They are not the *majority* of kludge lines. They are the 
AWL> old ones that predate the ^A flag, and they can't be 
AWL> defined away. However because they are found in (almost) 
AWL> every message, they take pride of place in the standard 
AWL> :-(

 PE> Yeah, I haven't got down to answering the detailed one yet, 
 PE> but that is my sentiments.  I fail to see that documenting 
 PE> exceptions to the normal format is a crime.  BFN.  Paul.

Perhaps spiltting that section in two, one bit for normal kludge lines, the
other for the progenitors... Hmm... I wonder if it would be worth folding
several of the FTSC documents into a coherent whole, with
chapters/appendices added on some of the important stuff like CRC code,
character sets, PD code headers etc...

...Alex.
(Pagan & Proud)

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