<<More no-no control char flames>>
Unfortunately, the news software used here does NOT strip the control
characters out of messages when it passes them on (just when it
displays them maybe?)! When it passes news to the pseudo-host 'notes',
the "letter bombs" [well named, Mark] are still ticking.
In particular, stuff gatewayed from some ARPA sites tends to have
garbage in the subject line, like <DEL>'s and <FF>'s and <VT>'s.
Form feeds clear the screen, on my terminal. (Real "cute" at 9600 baud
to get a joke with a form feed after the "Question:" part... ya' have
to play Karnac for real!)
The last message I saw where somebody tried to "highlight" a word, they
did it in BOTH the title and the text, it threw my terminal into a funny
blink mode. The really annoying problem is that until enough new notes get
posted to that group to push his header off the index page, every time
I finish with that notesfile, 'notes' is going to show me the index
page with the bomb in it, and I'm going to have to (1) go to the next
news group, (2) escape to the shell, (3) run a fixit program ("tset"). Ugh!
Rob Warnock
UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,harpo,sri-unix,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065
Incidentally, inews only strips nonprinting characters out of article
bodies but not out of the headers. I would not reccomend attempting
to underline text in an article title since as far as I know no news
reading program supports it.
Kenneth Almquist
It seems to be an informal convention that emphasis is denoted with
*asterisks* or ALL CAPITAL LETTERS rather than with terminal-dependent
sequences. I suggest that we continue doing things this way.
--
John Bruner (S-1 Project, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
MILNET: j...@mordor.ARPA [jdb@s1-c] (415) 422-0758
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!dual!mordor!jdb ...!decvax!decwrl!mordor!jdb
LETTER BOMB TRANSFER PROTOCOL
1. INTRODUCTION
The objective of Letter Bomb Transfer Protocol (LBTP) is to transfer
simple opinions of disgruntled network users reliably and efficiently.
LBTP is independant of any particular transmission or mail processing
subsystem and requires only a moderately reliable mail transfer system.
An important LBTP is its capability to relay these opinions across
transport service environments. LBTP provides a non-verbal, easily
understood response to any number of situations such as mail systems
who return non-decipherable error messages.
2. LBTP Model:
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