Alex K. wrote:
> After subscribing to that server/group, and then poking around the
> forums on their website, I think I've figured out the problem.
>
> Here are the headers from a message posted through the news server:
>
> From: Dmitry Jemerov
> Newsgroups: jetbrains.intellij.eap
> Subject: Re: IDEA Hangs Scanning a Particular Directory + Other
> AnomalousBehaviors
> Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 11:18:34 +0000 (UTC)
> Message-ID: <431b0f664fc2d8c9c10bd2658f1c@news.jetbrains.com>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.168.1.147
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 11:18:29 +0000 (UTC)
>
> And here are headers from a message posted through the forums:
>
> From: NetSurfer
> Newsgroups: jetbrains.intellij.eap
> Subject: New Reference Card
> Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:18:06 MSD
> Message-ID: <3501678.1189333116649.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: mail.intellij.net
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 10:18:36 +0000 (UTC)
>
> I've snipped out irrelevant headers.
>
> Now, lets look at whats happening here.
>
> In the first message, looking at the Date header, we see that it is
> properly formatted:
> Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 11:18:34 +0000 (UTC)
>
> That message displays in TB as 9/9/2007 7:18 AM, which it should, as my
> timezone is -0400 (EDT).
>
> The second message, however, has a problem, as someone else mentioned in
> this thread:
> Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:18:06 MSD
>
> TB displays that one as 9/9/2007 2:18 PM, exactly as it is in the header.
>
> MSD, to my knowledge, is not a valid timezone identifier. Without a
> valid timezone identifier or offset specified, it appears that TB is
> ignoring it, and using the date & time, without modification.
>
> I'm guessing that the other clients are probably detecting that there is
> no valid timezone/offset, and falling back to the NNTP-Posting-Date:
> header for the display of the date/time, which is properly formatted:
> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2007 11:18:29 +0000 (UTC)
>
> What I discovered, in poking around their forums, is that they are
> running a gateway between the forums and the news server. This will
> copy forum posts to the news server, and vice-versa. This is evident
> from the headers.
>
> If we compare the Message-ID & NNTP-Posting-Host headers from each
> message, we can see the difference.
>
> From the "good" post:
> Message-ID: <431b0f664fc2d8c9c10bd2658f1c@news.jetbrains.com>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.168.1.147
>
> From the "bad" post:
> Message-ID: <3501678.1189333116649.JavaMail.itn@is.intellij.net>
> NNTP-Posting-Host: mail.intellij.net
>
> Notice how the "bad" post Message-ID contains 'JavaMail.itn', and the
> NNTP-Posting-Host is 'mail.intellij.net'?
>
> I checked several posts, and any post containing 'JavaMail.itn' in the
> Message-ID header showed the same, flawed timezone, MSD. Those posts
> also all had the same NNTP-Posting-Host, 'mail.intellij.net'. Another
> common feature was that the email address in the From header was
> 'no_reply@jetbrains.com'.
>
> Messages that were posted directly to the news server, rather than the
> forum, showed the correct date formatting, different posting hosts, and
> different email addresses, as would be expected.
>
> So, it appears to me, that the problem lies with the JavaMail gateway,
> their configuration of it, or whatever kind of script they run on the
> forum to facilitate pushing the posts to the news server, as one of
> those would be responsible for creating the Date header that is sent to
> the news server.
>
> As to TB, is it a bug, or is it simply adhering to the standards, much
> like broken HTML will not display properly in FF?
>

Alex,

Thanks for taking the time and investigating the problem.
I will try to contact group owner and forward him your findings.

On the other side, it would be nice if TB could fallback to
NNTP-Posting-Date.

Tom