DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

NEWS(5)                  DragonFly File Formats Manual                 NEWS(5)

NAME
       news - USENET network news articles and batches

DESCRIPTION
       There are two formats of news articles: A and B.  A format is obsolete,
       but looks like this:

            Aarticle-ID
            newsgroups
            path
            date
            title
            Body of article

       A B format article consists of a series of header lines (collectively
       referred to as the message header), followed by an empty line, followed
       by the body.  A header line must begin with a word (consisting of
       alphanumerics and dashes), a colon, and at least one space, in that
       order.  This is a specialisation of RFC 822 format.  Continued headers
       are as per RFC 822.  Unrecognized headers are ignored.  News is stored
       in the same format transmitted, see ``Standard for the Interchange of
       USENET Messages'' (RFC 1036 nee 850) and ``Standard for the Format of
       ARPA Internet Text Messages'' (RFC 822, but note amendments in RFC
       1123) for a full description.  The following headers are among those
       recognized:

            From: user@host.domain[.domain ...] ( Full Name)
            Newsgroups: news groups
            Message-ID: <Unique RFC822 message-id>
            Subject: descriptive title
            Date: date posted
            Expires: expiration date
            Reply-To: address for mail replies
            References: Message-ID of article this is a follow-up to.
            Control: text of a control message

       A news batch consists of zero or more articles, each preceded by a line
       of the form

            #! rnews byte-count

       where byte-count is the number of bytes in the following article, where
       each newline is counted as a single byte, even if it is stored as a CR-
       LF or some other representation.  Spaces are significant: one before
       and one after rnews.  News batches are usually transmitted compressed.

       Various peculiar optional encapsulations of news batches exist which
       consist of doing something to the (probably compressed) batch, then
       prepending a #! goo line to the output, where goo reflects the form of
       encapsulation; known values of goo include cunbatch (the null
       encapsulation), and c7unbatch (encode the batch using only seven bits
       per character).

EXAMPLES
       An article.

            Path: att!eagle!jerry
            From: jerry@eagle.uucp (Jerry Schwarz)
            Newsgroups: news.announce
            Subject: Usenet Etiquette -- Please Read
            Message-ID: <642@eagle.UUCP>
            Date: Friday, 19 Nov 82 16:14:55 EST
            Followup-To: news.misc
            Expires: Saturday, 1 Jan 83 00:00:00 EST
            Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
            The body of the article comes here, after an empty line.

SEE ALSO
       checknews(1CN), compress(1), inews(1CN), nn(1), postnews(1CN),
       readnews(1CN), rn(1), vnews(1), getabsdate(3), newsctl(5), newssys(5),
       expire(8CN), newsbatch(8CN), newsmail(8CN), relaynews(8CN), rnews(8CN),
       newsinvaders(9.1)
       DARPA RFCs 1036, 850, 822, 1123

HISTORY
       Convoluted.

BUGS
       B format articles must not start with A, to distinguish them from A
       format; this is only a problem if moderators put Approved: first.

       Processing would be easier and potentially faster if Control: (if
       present) and Newsgroups: were required to be the first headers.

       People insist on making their whacko local encapsulation schemes
       (cunbatch, etc.)  rnews's problem.

       One could argue that RFC 822 is less than an ideal base for article
       format.  (On the other hand, at least it's textual, unlike ISO
       messages.)

                                  9 Sept 1994                          NEWS(5)