Usenet Article Standard Update (usefor)

Last Modified: 2007-02-13

Additional information is available at tools.ietf.org/wg/usefor

Chair(s):

  • Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com>

  • Harald Alvestrand <harald@alvestrand.no>

    Applications Area Director(s):

  • Chris Newman <chris.newman@sun.com>
  • Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

    Applications Area Advisor:

  • Lisa Dusseault <lisa@osafoundation.org>

    Editor(s):

  • Charles Lindsey <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>
  • Ken Murchison <ken@oceana.com>

    Mailing Lists:

    General Discussion: ietf-usefor@imc.org
    To Subscribe: ietf-usefor-request@imc.org
    In Body: 'subscribe' in the body of the message
    Archive: http://www.imc.org/ietf-usefor/index.html

    Description of Working Group:

    Note: A charter rewrite/update is underway.


    Motivation

    The Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages, defined in RFC 1036,
    was released in December 1987. This RFC defines the format that format
    that all usenet articles must follow (similar to the way RFC 822 does
    for email) and also covers the algorithm that is used to distribute
    usenet articles. Since that time there has been no official update
    published despite the rapid growth in Usenet and other networks that
    use
    the RFC 1036 article format.

    A draft update to RFC 1036 ( "Son of RFC 1036" ) was released by Henry
    Spencer in June 1994 but this was not further pursued and is now itself
    out of date. Currently a combination of this and RFC 1036 are regarded
    as the de-facto standard.

    At the present time an urgent need has been identified to formalize and
    document many of the current and proposed extensions to the Usenet
    Article format. Many extensions are only vaguely documented and have
    competing and overlapping alternatives. A draft update to RFC 1036 (
    "Son of RFC 1036" ) was released by Henry Spencer in June 1994 but
    this
    was not further pursued and is now itself out of date. Currently a
    combination of this and RFC 1036 are regarded as the de-facto standard.

    At the present time an urgent need has been identified to formalize and
    document many of the current and proposed extensions to the Usenet
    Article format. Many extensions are only vaguely documented and have
    competing and overlapping alternatives.

    In particular the following areas need urgent attention:

    - Standards for the signing of articles (sign-control and PGP-MOOSE)
    - Authentication of cancels.
    - Use of non-ASCII character sets in article headers and bodies
    - Standardization of article bodies and the use of MIME in articles.
    - Standardization and extension of 3rd party control messages affecting
      articles (NOCEM)
    - General revision of various limits (eg article size) listed in
      previous standards.

    and many other aspects of the standards need reviewing.

    Description

    The Goal of this working group is to publish a standards-track
    successor
    to RFC 1036 that with particular attention to backward compatibility,
    formalizes best current practice and best proposed practice. The Group
    shall also aid and/or oversee the production of other Usenet related
    Internet Drafts and Standards.

    The Working Group shall:

    1. Produce an Internet Draft (or series of drafts) that describes the
      core standards for a Usenet article and the features that all Usenet
      software should take account of.

    2. Produce a group of Internet Drafts formally describing extensions to
      the core standard for a Usenet article (see above).

    3. Produce a further Internet Draft that incorporates the core standard
      for a Usenet article (see 1) plus all those extensions (see 2) that

      the working group believe should become part of a final standard.

    4. Publish a standards-track successor to RFC 1036 that formalizes best
      current practice and best proposed practice.

    5. Publish any other extensions to the Usenet Article Standard that
      warrant being formal extensions but are outside the scope of the
    main
      standard.

    Goals and Milestones:

    Done  Publish USEFOR -00
    Done  Publish USEPRO -00
    Done  Publish USEFOR -01 (merged version)
    Done  Last Call USEFOR
    Jan 2005  Last Call USEPRO
    Mar 2005  Last Call USEAGE
    Apr 2005  ReCharter or conclude

    Internet-Drafts:

    Netnews Article Format (75511 bytes)
    Netnews Architecture and Protocols (117777 bytes)

    No Request For Comments

    IETF Secretariat - Please send questions, comments, and/or suggestions to ietf-web@ietf.org.

    Return to working group directory.

    Return to IETF home page.