usefor-article-09 February 2003

1.3.  Historical Outline

   Network news originated as the medium of communication for Usenet,
   circa 1980.  Since then, Usenet has grown explosively, and many
   Internet and non-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.1 and
   Appendix A.2 for historical reasons only.  With publication of [RFC
   850] in 1983, news articles came to closely resemble Internet Mail
   messages, with some restrictions and some additional headers. [RFC
   1036] in 1987 updated [RFC 850] without making major changes.

   A Draft popularly referred to as "Son of 1036" [Son-of-1036] was
   written in 1994 by Henry Spencer. That document formed the original
   basis for this standard, and its author has endorsed this standard as
   its successor.  Much is taken directly from Son of 1036, and it is
   hoped that we have followed its spirit and intentions. It is
   anticipated that [Son-of-1036] will be published as an Historic RFC,
   in a suitably relabelled form, following the publication of this
   standard.

--- ../usefor-article-08/Historical_Outline.out          August 2002
+++ ../usefor-article-09/Historical_Outline.out          February 2003