ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers - draft 3

[Jack De Winter]

At 05:43 PM 1/11/97 +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
>Jon Ribbens <jon at oaktree.co.uk> said:
>> > I could be satisfied if the spec explicitly catered for master/slave
>> > configurations by saying that the master must assign article numbers in
>> > order of arrival, but the slave may receive articles from the master out
>> > of order and clients should be able to cope with that.
>> 
>> You might want them to, but unfortunately they can't.
>
>I don't see why clients "can't" deal with out-of-order arrival.  A few
>days ago I explained how a client can easily deal with out-of-order
>arrival.

Well, there is the difference of can and will.  If I look at a newsgroup,
and I read all of the articles, say 1 to 100 with any gaps.  I expect
that I have read all articles in that range.  Now, if #45 suddenly appears,
and it is something that I did not read (i.e. reinstatement), I would
be upset.  And keeping track of the fact that I have read 1-44,46-100
seems to be a waste of resources.  Now alerting of a reinstatement
where it was cancelled and is being put back in, I would like that.

Basically a 'hey, we replaced this article after it was wrongly removed'
warning would be great as an exception in rare cases.  But we should find
a better way to handle Master/Slave situations so that we can get
around this issue.

After all, it is the slave's responsibility to show the same information
as the master server, and not the protocol's.  If there are problems with
the feed, then it should be compensating.

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.