ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers - draft 2

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Jack De Winter <jack at wildbear.on.ca> writes
>>Don't use "current", that has temporal signifigance, and the
>>"current" high water mark will change when a new article arrives
>>(you just don't know it yet).  Use "the high water mark reported"
>>or something like that.
>
>There was one gent who said that he cached the information when the
>group command was issued.  How would this affect your description here?
>In that sense, current is kind of foggy, and having an indication of
>significance might make the problem worse or better.

"current" is defined to be the value returned by the most recent GROUP
command on this connection. However, since people have obviously missed
this point, I've changed the wording to use "reported" instead.

>Agreed.  I think the point we need to address here is: what happens if
>a client is keeping track of articles, the lwm goes above the article
>and it is reinstated?  what happens if the client thinks it has read
>the article (I fetched all of the articles that were there from 1 to
>20, but did not get 13 as it was not there.  It is now reinstated.
>How do I know that 13 has been reinstated and that I should look at it?)

I've assumed that the client is keeping a record of the form:
    1-12,14-16,18-20
If 13 reappears, it will see it and fetch it then.

However, if the LWM goes to (say) 15, the client is entitled to assume
that article 13 will never reappear. It can thus change its record to:
    1-16,18-20

I've then said that 13 MUST never reappear, because you've reported a
LWM of 15.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather    | Associate Director  | Director
Tel: +44 181 371 1138 | Demon Internet Ltd. | CityScape Internet Services Ltd.
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