NEWS(5)NEWS(5)NAMEnews - USENET network news articles and batches
DESCRIPTION
There are two formats of news articles: A and B. A format is obsolete,
but looks like this:
Aarticle-ID
newsgroups
path
date
title
Body of article
A B format article consists of a series of header lines (collectively
referred to as the message header), followed by an empty line, followed
by the body. A header line must begin with a word (consisting of
alphanumerics and dashes), a colon, and at least one space, in that
order. This is a specialisation of RFC 822 format. Continued headers
are as per RFC 822. Unrecognized headers are ignored. News is stored
in the same format transmitted, see ``Standard for the Interchange of
USENET Messages'' (RFC 1036 nee 850) and ``Standard for the Format of
ARPA Internet Text Messages'' (RFC 822, but note amendments in RFC
1123) for a full description. The following headers are among those
recognized:
From: user@host.domain[.domain ...] ( Full Name)
Newsgroups: news groups
Message-ID: <Unique RFC822 message-id>
Subject: descriptive title
Date: date posted
Expires: expiration date
Reply-To: address for mail replies
References: Message-ID of article this is a follow-up to.
Control: text of a control message
A news batch consists of zero or more articles, each preceded by a line
of the form
#! rnews byte-count
where byte-count is the number of bytes in the following article, where
each newline is counted as a single byte, even if it is stored as a CR-
LF or some other representation. Spaces are significant: one before
and one after rnews. News batches are usually transmitted compressed.
Various peculiar optional encapsulations of news batches exist which
consist of doing something to the (probably compressed) batch, then
prepending a #! goo line to the output, where goo reflects the form of
encapsulation; known values of goo include cunbatch (the null encapsu‐
lation), and c7unbatch (encode the batch using only seven bits per
character).
EXAMPLES
An article.
Path: att!eagle!jerry
From: jerry@eagle.uucp (Jerry Schwarz)
Newsgroups: news.announce
Subject: Usenet Etiquette -- Please Read
Message-ID: <642@eagle.UUCP>
Date: Friday, 19 Nov 82 16:14:55 EST
Followup-To: news.misc
Expires: Saturday, 1 Jan 83 00:00:00 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
The body of the article comes here, after an empty line.
SEE ALSOchecknews(1CN), compress(1), inews(1CN), nn(1), postnews(1CN), read‐
news(1CN), rn(1), vnews(1), getabsdate(3), newsctl(5), newssys(5),
expire(8CN), newsbatch(8CN), newsmail(8CN), relaynews(8CN), rnews(8CN),
newsinvaders(9.1)
DARPA RFCs 1036, 850, 822, 1123
HISTORY
Convoluted.
BUGS
B format articles must not start with A, to distinguish them from A
format; this is only a problem if moderators put Approved: first.
Processing would be easier and potentially faster if Control: (if
present) and Newsgroups: were required to be the first headers.
People insist on making their whacko local encapsulation schemes (cun‐
batch, etc.) rnews's problem.
One could argue that RFC 822 is less than an ideal base for article
format. (On the other hand, at least it's textual, unlike ISO mes‐
sages.)
9 Sept 1994 NEWS(5)
