usefor-article-04 April 2001

4.3.1.  Body Format Issues

   The body of an article SHOULD NOT be empty. A posting or injecting
   agent which does not reject such an article entirely SHOULD at least
   issue a warning message to the poster and supply a non-empty body.
   Note that the separator line MUST be present even if the body is
   empty.

        NOTE: Some existing news software is known to react badly to
        body-less articles, hence the request for posting and injecting
        agents to insert a body in such cases. The sentence "This
        article was probably generated by a buggy news reader" has
        traditionally been used is this situation.
   Note that an article body is a sequence of lines terminated by CRLFs,
   not arbitrary binary data, and in particular it MUST end with a CRLF.
   However, relaying agents SHOULD treat the body of an article as an
   uninterpreted sequence of octets (except as mandated by changes of
   CRLF representation and by control-message processing) and SHOULD
   avoid imposing constraints on it. See also section 4.5.

   Posters SHOULD avoid using control characters and escape sequences
   except for tab (ASCII 9), formfeed (ASCII 12) and, possibly,
   backspace (ASCII 8). Tab signifies sufficient horizontal white space
   to reach the next of a set of fixed positions; posters are warned
   that there is no standard set of positions, so tabs should be avoided
   if precise spacing is essential. Formfeed (which is sometimes
   referred to as the "spoiler character") signifies a point at which a
   reading agent Ought to pause and await reader interaction before
   displaying further text. Reading agents MUST NOT pass other control
   characters or escape sequences unaltered to an output device.

        NOTE: Backspace was historically used for underlining, done by
        an underscore (ASCII 95), a backspace, and a character, repeated
        for each character that should be underlined. Posters are warned
        that underlining is not available on all output devices or
        supported by all reading agents and is best not relied on for
        essential meaning.

--- ../usefor-article-03/Body_Format_Issues.out          February 2000
+++ ../usefor-article-04/Body_Format_Issues.out          April 2001
@@ -1,11 +1,10 @@
 4.3.1.  Body Format Issues
 
-   The body of an article MAY be empty, although posting agents SHOULD
-   consider this an error condition (meriting returning the article to
-   the poster for revision). A posting or injecting agent which does not
-   reject such an article SHOULD issue a warning message to the poster
-   and supply a non-empty body.  Note that the separator line MUST be
-   present even if the body is empty.
+   The body of an article SHOULD NOT be empty. A posting or injecting
+   agent which does not reject such an article entirely SHOULD at least
+   issue a warning message to the poster and supply a non-empty body.
+   Note that the separator line MUST be present even if the body is
+   empty.
 
         NOTE: Some existing news software is known to react badly to
         body-less articles, hence the request for posting and injecting
@@ -19,21 +18,21 @@
    CRLF representation and by control-message processing) and SHOULD
    avoid imposing constraints on it. See also section 4.5.
 
-   Posters SHOULD avoid using control characters in US-ASCII (or other
-   CCSs) except for tab (ASCII 9), formfeed (ASCII 12), and backspace
-   (ASCII 8). Tab signifies sufficient horizontal white space to reach
-   the next of a set of fixed positions; posters are warned that there
-   is no standard set of positions, so tabs should be avoided if precise
-   spacing is essential. Formfeed (which is sometimes referred to as the
-   "spoiler character") signifies a point at which a reading agent
-   SHOULD pause and await reader interaction before displaying further
-   text.  Backspace SHOULD be used only for underlining, done by a
-   sequence of underscores (ASCII 95) followed by an equal number of
-   backspaces, signifying that the same number of text characters
-   following are to be underlined. Posters are warned that underlining
-   is not available on all output devices and is best not relied on for
-   essential meaning. Reading agents SHOULD recognize underlining and
-   translate it to the appropriate commands for devices that support it.
-   Reading agents MUST NOT pass other control characters or escape
-   sequences unaltered to the output device.
+   Posters SHOULD avoid using control characters and escape sequences
+   except for tab (ASCII 9), formfeed (ASCII 12) and, possibly,
+   backspace (ASCII 8). Tab signifies sufficient horizontal white space
+   to reach the next of a set of fixed positions; posters are warned
+   that there is no standard set of positions, so tabs should be avoided
+   if precise spacing is essential. Formfeed (which is sometimes
+   referred to as the "spoiler character") signifies a point at which a
+   reading agent Ought to pause and await reader interaction before
+   displaying further text. Reading agents MUST NOT pass other control
+   characters or escape sequences unaltered to an output device.
+
+        NOTE: Backspace was historically used for underlining, done by
+        an underscore (ASCII 95), a backspace, and a character, repeated
+        for each character that should be underlined. Posters are warned
+        that underlining is not available on all output devices or
+        supported by all reading agents and is best not relied on for
+        essential meaning.