[NNTP] Snapshot 2 and straw poll

[Russ Allbery]

Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk> writes:

> It is slightly surprising that the LISTGROUPS command is not "LIST
> GROUPS", but I suppose that is history.

No, it's because it doesn't fit the requirements of a LIST command.  In
particular, it changes the server state by changing the selected group,
something that LIST commands are not permitted to do.

>    OUTSTANDING ISSUE
>       The above permits a transit-only or reader-only server to
>       implement more than the relevant minimal set of commands.  Is this
>       a good idea or should the server be required NOT to implement
>       them? For example, should a transit-only server be allowed to
>       implement NEWNEWS? It could be a useful way for a client to
>       determine which articles don't need to be sent in the absence of
>       CHECK.  What about GROUP? If so, what happens to the
>       currently-selected group after MODE READER?

> I am happy to allow non-x servers to offer a few of the
> x-facilities. Suck feeds often use the NEWNEWS command (that's what I
> do, and it goes straight into my main news database long before any user
> agent becomes involved). So I am happy if someone wants to implement a
> server specially tailored to support suck feeds of this kind.

I don't see any reason to prevent servers from implementing commands from
both sets, but note that we don't have any way of advertising just what
commands from the other set the server implements, and I don't think we
want to create a capability for every possible command.  So it's going to
be of rather limited usefulness.

> ... Servers SHOULD NOT be mode-switching.

> RFC 2119 language seems a but too strong there. Perhaps some weaker word
> like "deprecated" would be better (we might "deprecate" INN, but it is
> not going to go away anytime soon, and I would not like to burden it
> with violating a "SHOULD").

I'm happy with having the configuration of INN that requires MODE READER
be in violation of a SHOULD.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>