usefor-article-11 June 2003

8.8.1.  Duties of an Outgoing Gateway

   From the perspective of Netnews, an outgoing gateway is just a
   special type of reading agent. The exact nature of what the outgoing
   gateway will need to do to articles depends on the medium to which
   the articles are being gated. The operation of the outgoing gateway
   is only subject to additional constraints in the presence of one or
   more corresponding incoming gateways back from that medium to
   Netnews, since this opens the possibility of loops.

   In general, the following practices are recommended for all outgoing
   gateways, regardless of whether there is known to be a related
   incoming gateway, both as a precautionary measure and as a guideline
   to quality of implementation.



   1. The message identifier of the news article should be preserved if
      at all possible, preferably as or within the corresponding unique
      identifier of the other medium, but if not at least as a comment
      in the message. This helps greatly with preventing loops.

   2. The Date of the news article should also be preserved if possible,
      for similar reasons.

   3. The message should be tagged in some way so as to prevent its
      reinjection into Netnews. This may be impossible to do without
      knowledge of potential incoming gateways, but it is better to try
      to provide some indication even if not successful; at the least, a
      human-readable indication that the article should not be gated
      back to Netnews can help locate a human problem.

   4. Netnews control messages should not be gated to another medium
      unless they would somehow be meaningful in that medium.

--- ../usefor-article-10/Duties_of_an_Outgoing_Gateway.out          April 2003
+++ ../usefor-article-11/Duties_of_an_Outgoing_Gateway.out          June 2003
@@ -13,6 +13,8 @@
    incoming gateway, both as a precautionary measure and as a guideline
    to quality of implementation.
 
+
+
    1. The message identifier of the news article should be preserved if
       at all possible, preferably as or within the corresponding unique
       identifier of the other medium, but if not at least as a comment
@@ -20,7 +22,6 @@
 
    2. The Date of the news article should also be preserved if possible,
       for similar reasons.
-
 
    3. The message should be tagged in some way so as to prevent its
       reinjection into Netnews. This may be impossible to do without