[leafnode-list] Re: [Fwd: Problem with small and big Capitals of newsgroups]

[krasel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Cornelius Krasel)]

Dirk Dettmering wrote:

> after upgrading to leafnode 1.9.4 I can't get any article from the local
> newsgroups of our university which have capitalized letters. They are
> all spelled Marburg...

Capitalized letters in newsgroup names are a problem because it is
not strictly defined whether newsgroup names should be case-sensitive
or not.

Son-of-RFC1036 defines the content of the Newsgroups: header as
lower-case:

          Newsgroup names MUST not contain uppercase  letters,  except
          where required by encodings in encoded words.

It says, however:

               NOTE: Possibly newsgroup names  should  have  been
               case-insensitive, but all existing software treats
               them as case-sensitive.   (RFC  977  [rrr]  claims
               that they are case-insensitive in NNTP, but exist-
               ing implementations are believed to ignore  this.)
               The simplest solution is just to ban use of upper-
               case letters, since no widespread  newsgroup  name
               uses  them  anyway; this avoids any possibility of
               confusion.

Most servers where I encountered the problem so far (e.g.
news.microsoft.de) did treat newsgroup names indeed as case-
insensitive; therefore 1.9.4 (in contrast to 1.9.2) did so as well.
Apparently, INN does not like this:

~% telnet news.uni-marburg.de nntp
Trying 137.248.1.75...
Connected to surz18.hrz.Uni-Marburg.DE.
Escape character is '^]'.
201 News.Uni-Marburg.DE InterNetNews NNRP server INN 1.7.2 08-Dec-1997 ready (no posting).
group marburg.uni.hrz
411 No such group marburg.uni.hrz
group Marburg.uni.hrz
211 17 2370 2387 Marburg.uni.hrz
quit
205 .
Connection closed by foreign host.
~%

There is no easy way to fix this in leafnode-1.9.4; it might be
necessary to downgrade to 1.9.2.

--Cornelius.

-- 
/* Cornelius Krasel, U Wuerzburg, Dept. of Pharmacology, Versbacher Str. 9 */
/* D-97078 Wuerzburg, Germany   email: phak004@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  SP4 */
/* "Science is the game we play with God to find out what His rules are."  */

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