ietf-nntp NEWNEWS deprecation.

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Vincent Archer said:
> The answer is: why would NEWNEWS be more useful than an OVER/HDR?

Efficiency.

> If you are not just fetching news for further processing, but fetching
> them for reading, as you "news-in-a-watch" analogy indicates, then NEWNEWS
> is totally useless, because to READ news, you need a lot more than getting
> articles.

Not true. The economics of phone calls in this country mean that the best
strategy is often to download all the articles in one fast session, and
then do the processing afterwards. Or download the heads and then select
the bodies you want for later.

> If these applications use NEWNEWS, then they'll be outperformed by anything
> that uses the more advanced processing options that already exist today,

I'm afraid that what I'm seeing here (and it's not just Vincent, he just
happens to be a suitable place to hang my reply on) is:

Pro-NEWNEWS:
    It's in the RFC.
    We find it useful.

Anti-NEWNEWS:
    INN is crap.
    Therefore we should get rid of NEWNEWS and force people to change.

The anti's just aren't addressing our issues: it's *IN* the RFC, and we
find it useful. If INN had better code, would you be making this fuss about
getting rid of NEWNEWS ?

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