s-o-1036 June 1994

2.4. End Of Line

How the end of a text line is  represented  depends  on  the
context  and  the implementation.  For Internet transmission
via protocols such as SMTP [rrr], an  end-of-line  is  a  CR
(ASCII  13)  followed  by an LF (ASCII 10).  ISO C [rrr] and
many modern operating systems indicate  end-of-line  with  a
single  character,  typically  ASCII LF (aka "newline"), and
this is the normal convention when news is  transmitted  via
UUCP.  A variety of other methods are in use, including out-
of-band methods in which there is no specific character that
means end-of-line.

This Draft does not constrain how end-of-line is represented
in news, except that characters other than CR  and  LF  MUST
not  be  usurped  for  use  in  end-of-line representations.
Also, obviously, all software dealing with a particular copy
of  an  article  must  agree  on  the convention to be used.
"EOL" is used to mean "whatever  end-of-line  representation
is  appropriate";  it  is  not  necessarily  a  character or
sequence of characters.

INTERNET DRAFT to be        NEWS                    sec. 2.4


     NOTE: If faced with picking an EOL  representation
     in the absence of other constraints, use of a sin-
     gle character simplifies processing, and the ASCII
     standard  [rrr] specifies that if one character is
     to be used for  this  purpose,  it  should  be  LF
     (ASCII 10).

     NOTE:  Inside  MIME encodings, use of the Internet
     canonical EOL representation (CR followed  by  LF)
     is mandatory.  See [rrr].