ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers

[Jack De Winter]

>>Mmm... in spite of saying, above, that the recommendation seems reasonable,
>>I'm now starting to wonder about that. If it's only a recommendation,
>>clients still have to cope with servers NEXTing to articles beyond those
>>mentioned by GROUP.
>
>....and yes, since the client cannot depend on the server not to step
>NEXT beyond "last" (or LAST beyond "first"), then the client has to cope
>whatever the RFC says.
>
>> It can't be mandatory since it conflicts with existing
>>implementations. Therefore - are there any situations where there would be
>>any significant benefits from limiting the LAST/NEXT range to match the
>>range from GROUP (given that it's trivial for the client to behave as though
>>the server had done it)?
>
>I understand that the objective is to tidy up the wording to reflect
>reality, rather than tighten up the design.  In that spirit one could
>include two recommendations:

My understanding is that we were supposed to make the 977bis reflect
reality and fix any bugs that we have noticed since 977.  Is this
correct? 

For example, the AUTHINFO GENERIC is something that is not yet inreality,
but it looks like current consensus is to move it towards John Meyer's
SASL security spec. This is a 'it was not fully specified in 977, but
we need to specify it now' thing.

regards,
Jack
-------------------------------------------------
Jack De Winter - Wildbear Consulting, Inc.
(519) 576-3873		http://www.wildbear.on.ca/

Author of SLMail(95/NT) (http://www.seattlelab.com/) and other great products.