ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers

[Chris Hall]

In article <851804656.27539.0 at office.demon.net>, "Clive D.W. Feather"
<clive at demon.net> writes
>Jeff Coffler said:
>> I can guarentee consistent behavior
>> for commands like LAST, NEXT, and ARTICLE commands (if the "current"
>> article number would go out of range of my saved values, then I will
>> give an appropriate response code).
>> 
>> Now, we can't require this (since it wasn't in the original spec, and
>> since many servers today don't enforce this), but: shouldn't we recommend
>> this behavior (so that, at least if recommendations are followed, NNTP
>> behavior is nice and consistent across commands)?

>For my next draft, I've added wording to NEXT saying:
>
>    A server MIGHT, but SHOULD NOT return an article number greater than
>    the "last" value from the most recent GROUP command for this client.
>
>How does this look to people ?

And similar words for LAST, I assume, to cope with the case of an
article being reinstated !

If LAST and NEXT are allowed to wander outside the range "first".."last"
returned by GROUP, then the "arts" figure returned by GROUP could be
exceeded -- which is a bit chewy.  Mind you, I don't see much use for
the "arts" figure.

For clients that remember the state of newsgroups, it's the value of
"last" that matters, so that each time the client looks at a newsgroup
it doesn't need to worry about stuff from the previous highest article
number back.  The client can do that using the previous "last" figure,
so the suggested recommendation is helpful.  However, since this cannot
be depended on, the client is wiser to note the article number returned
by the last ARTICLE, BODY or HEAD command.
-- 
Chris Hall                                       Chris.Hall at turnpike.com