nntp-extensions Re: ietf-nntp NNTP SEARCH extension internet-draft available

[Mike Macgirvin]

> Well, for starters, how many IMAP news clients are there today
> (that is, news clients that talk IMAP to a news server to fetch
> USENET news)?  Last time I counted, it was zero.

	Funny way to ask the question. The answer is certainly non-zero, but
you've asked it in such a way to limit the context. I use my IMAP client
routinely to read USENET. Since IMAP is storage neutral, every IMAP client is
therefore an IMAP news client. So how many IMAP news clients are there? Well,
how many IMAP clients are there?

	There are a few weaknesses in using an IMAP client as a news client
though. That's what Keith is asking about. Mostly a better way to do cross
folder searches than the current prototype SCAN extensions, and better methods
to discover new folders/newsgroups, although some of this is covered in
different ways than the NNTP methods. ...I.e. a mailbox could be marked as
"interesting", which is left to implementors to define; whereas NNTP allows an
explicit date-based search for new folders. 

	The client also needs a lot of design work to be able to seamlessly
present both contexts in an intuitive interface; but there is nothing
fundamentally at odds with using any IMAP client on a news store, even if it
was designed primarily for mail.  Many clients have been designed with both
paradigms in mind. ...In fact they generally use NNTP as the analog to SMTP for
posting messages; but all read access goes through IMAP.

	Several (most existing?) IMAP servers automatically pick up news if it
exists on the system in the defined places. So the number of news servers that
talk IMAP is also non-zero, and in fact could be a high number (at least
hundreds, perhaps thousands?). 

	So the argument isn't _if_ IMAP can be used to read news, but only one
of how to make the experience more enjoyable.