rfc2822 April 2001

1. Introduction

--- ../s-o-1036/Introduction.out          June 1994
+++ ../rfc2822/Introduction.out          April 2001
@@ -1,93 +1,2 @@
 1. Introduction
-
-Network  news articles resemble mail messages but are broad-
-cast to potentially-large audiences, using a flooding  algo-
-rithm  that  propagates one copy to each interested host (or
-groups thereof), typically stores only one  copy  per  host,
-and  does  not require any central administration or system-
-atic registration of interested users.  Network news  origi-
-nated as the medium of communication for Usenet, circa 1980.
-Since then Usenet has grown explosively, and  many  Internet
-sites  participate  in it.  In addition, the news technology
-is now in widespread use for other purposes, on the Internet
-and elsewhere.
-
-The  earliest  news  interchange used the so-called "A News"
-article  format.   Shortly  thereafter,  an  article  format
-vaguely  resembling  Internet  mail  was  devised  and  used
-briefly.  Both of those  formats  are  completely  obsolete;
-they  are  documented  in  appendix A for historical reasons
-only.  With publication of RFC 850 [rrr] in 1983, news arti-
-cles  came  to closely resemble Internet mail messages, with
-some restrictions and some  additional  headers.   RFC  1036
-[rrr]  in 1987 updated RFC 850 without making major changes.
-
-In the intervening five years, the RFC 1036  article  format
-has  proven  quite  satisfactory,  although minor extensions
-appear desirable to match recent developments in areas  such
-as  multi-media  mail.  RFC 1036 itself has not proven quite
-so satisfactory.  It is often  rather  vague  and  does  not
-address  some  issues  at  all;  this has caused significant
-interoperability problems at times, and implementations have
-diverged  somewhat.  Worse, although it was intended primar-
-ily to document existing  practice,  it  did  not  precisely
-match  existing  practice even at the time it was published,
-and the deviations have grown since.
-
-INTERNET DRAFT to be        NEWS                      sec. 1
-
-
-This Draft attempts to specify the format of  articles,  and
-the  procedures  used  to exchange them and process them, in
-sufficient detail to allow full interoperability.  In  addi-
-tion,  some  tentative suggestions are made about directions
-for future development, in an attempt to  avert  unnecessary
-divergence  and  consequent loss of interoperability.  Major
-extensions (e.g.  cryptographic  authentication)  that  need
-significant  development effort are left to be undertaken as
-independent efforts.
-
-     NOTE: One question this all may raise is:  why  is
-     there  no  News-Version header, analogous to MIME-
-     Version, specifying a version number corresponding
-     to  this specification?  The answer is: it doesn't
-     appear  to  be  useful,  given  news's   backward-
-     compatibility  constraints.   The  major  use of a
-     version number  is  indicating  which  of  several
-     INCOMPATIBLE  interpretations  is  relevant.   The
-     impossibility of orchestrating any sort of  simul-
-     taneous change over news's installed base makes it
-     necessary to avoid such incompatible  changes  (as
-     opposed  to extensions) entirely.  MIME has a ver-
-     sion number mostly because it introduced incompat-
-     ible  changes  to  the  interpretation  of several
-     "Content-"  headers.   This  Draft   attempts   no
-     changes  in interpretation and it appears doubtful
-     that future Drafts will find it feasible to intro-
-     duce any.
-
-     UNRESOLVED  ISSUE:  Should  this  be reconsidered?
-     Only if the header has SPECIFIC IDENTIFIABLE  uses
-     today.  Otherwise it's just useless added bulk.
-
-As  in  this  Draft's  predecessors, the exact means used to
-transmit articles from one host to another is not specified.
-NNTP  [rrr]  is probably the most common transmission method
-on the Internet, but a number of others are known to  be  in
-use,  including  the UUCP protocol [rrr] extensively used in
-the early days of Usenet and still much used on its  fringes
-today.
-
-Several  of  the mechanisms described in this Draft may seem
-somewhat strange or even bizarre at first reading.  As  with
-Internet  mail, there is no reasonable possibility of updat-
-ing the entire installed base of news software promptly,  so
-interoperability  with  old  software  is  crucial  and will
-remain so.  Compatibility with existing practice and robust-
-ness  in  an  imperfect world necessarily take priority over
-
-INTERNET DRAFT to be        NEWS                      sec. 1
-
-
-elegance.