    Document:   FSC-0070
    Date:       15-Jul-94
    Revision:   002

                  Improving Fidonet/Usenet gating and Dupe Checking

                        Franck Arnaud, Fidonet 2:320/213.666

      Status of this document
      -----------------------

     This FSC suggests a proposed standard for the FidoNet(r) community,
     and invites discussion and suggestions for improvements. Distribution of
     this document is unlimited.

     Fido and FidoNet are registered marks of Tom Jennings and Fido Software.

      Introduction
      ------------

     The complexity of Usenet/Fidonet gating and the large number of gateways
     has led to a non-negligible quantity of duplicates appearing regularly in
     both the Usenet and Fidonet worlds. This proposal defines a standard method
     for gateway software to deal with conversion of message identifiers between
     both worlds, so that we can improve the reliability of Usenet/Fidonet
     gateways.

     In this document "^" means <control-A> (character 01h).

      History
      -------

     Revision 002 adds details and makes the Fidonet to Usenet sheme FTS-0009
     compliant.

      Usenet To Fidonet Message Identifier Conversion
      -----------------------------------------------

     A major problem is preventing messages gated into Fidonet from RFC822 from
     being gated back to Usenet at another gateway with a new message id. The
     easy way to solve that is simply to store the RFC message ID in a kludge
     line. This kludge line could also allow identifying messages gated from
     Usenet (this could be used by message editors to allow private replies to
     the nearest uucp gateway for example).

     It is proposed that the ^RFCID: kludge is used to store the RFC Message-ID:
     in Fidonet messages. Of course, the use of the RFCID kludge doesn't replace
     the standard fts-0009 Message-ID:.

           (Usenet)  Message-ID: <92_feb_10_19192012901@prep.ai.mit.edu>
        to (Fido)    ^MSGID: 2:300/400.5 6789fedc
                     ^RFCID: 92_feb_10_19192012901@prep.ai.mit.edu

     Note ^RFCID does not include the Message-ID enclosing "<" and ">".

     Then if a gateway finds a ^RFCID line in a Fido message, it will use it in
     the Usenet message ID, instead of converting the ^MSGID.

      Fidonet to Usenet Message Identifiers Conversion
      ------------------------------------------------

     The dupe checking in Usenet is based on the message ID. Fidonet now has its
     own standard message identification standard (fts-0009).

     So it would be interesting if the same Fidonet message gated at different
     gateways had the same ID in Usenet to help news processing programs in
     stopping dupes.

     The proposed fido ^MSGID: to RFC1036 Message-ID: conversion method is
     defined as below:

     The ^MSGID: value (a string) is not parsed and converted as below to the ID
     part of Usenet's Message-ID. The Message-ID domain is the fidonet domain,
     "fidonet.org" if the gated echomail comes from the Fidonet(tm) network.

     To convert the MSGID string, the following rules are applied:
     - Alphanumeric (a-z,A-Z,0-9) characters are kept intact (case preserved).
     - Non-alphanumeric characters - including the space beetwen the origin
       address and the serial number - are converted to '-'.

     Some examples:

        (Fido)   ^MSGID: 2:300/400 12345AbC
     to (Usenet) Message-ID: <2-300-400-12345AbC@fidonet.org>

        (Fido)   ^MSGID: 15:300/400.50@somenet abcd6789
     to (Usenet) Message-ID: <15-300-400-50-somenet-abcd6789@fidonet.org>

        (Fido)   ^MSGID: Internet.Domain.org aBcD1234
     to (Usenet) Message-ID: <Internet-Domain-org-aBcD1234@fidonet.org>

        (Fido)   ^MSGID: "LZKkoe$1982 98a" 45678bcd
     to (Usenet) Message-ID: <-LZKkoe-1982-98a--45678bcd@fidonet.org>

Go Back