INTERNET-DRAFT                               Charles H. Lindsey
Usenet Format Working Group                  University of Manchester
                                             July 2001

4.3.1. Body Format Issues

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 (US-ASCII 9), formfeed (US-ASCII 12) and, possibly,
   backspace (US-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.

        NOTE: Passing other control characters or escape sequences
        unaltered to a display or printing device is likely to have
        unpredictable results, except in the case of a device adapted to
        the special needs of some particular character set.

        NOTE: Backspace was historically used for underlining, done by
        an underscore (US-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.

Diffs to previous draft

--- {draft-04}	Wed Jul 11 21:55:12 2001
+++ {draft-05}	Wed Jul 11 21:55:12 2001
@@ -19,20 +19,24 @@
    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
+   except for tab (US-ASCII 9), formfeed (US-ASCII 12) and, possibly,
+   backspace (US-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.
+   displaying further text.
+
+        NOTE: Passing other control characters or escape sequences
+        unaltered to a display or printing device is likely to have
+        unpredictable results, except in the case of a device adapted to
+        the special needs of some particular character set.
 
         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.
+        an underscore (US-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.