ietf-nntp Newsgroup Name Length Question

Jack De Winter jack at wildbear.on.ca
Wed Jan 15 10:59:55 PST 1997


At 08:53 AM 1/15/97 -0800, Kenneth Herron wrote:
>>I was sure that Dave Lawrence pointed me to a draft that specified 
>>newsgroup name lengths etc.  Of course, it might have been an expired 
>>document or not on any sort of standards track.
>
>Henry Spencer's son-of-1036 document specifies a character set for
>group names, as well as the 14-char-per-component limit.  He doesn't
>prescribe a maximum total length.  He also provides for MIME-encoding
>funny characters in any name component after the first (using the =20
>syntax, I presume).
>
>I agree that this is really the responsibility of an RFC 1036-like
>document.  The NNTP RFC should say as little on the subject as
>possible, perhaps simply that they can't contain white space.  Length
>is limited by the necessity of fitting them inside the 512-char
>command length limit.

I disagree... if 977bis(nntp) was like 821bis(SMTP), then I could
see your point.  822bis does not have to have knowledge of the
message to pass it along, only the 'envelope'.  However, 977bis
does need to address the newsgroup name constitution as it is an
integral component of the protocol... unless you want to try to
use a group command without the group name itself?

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

Author of SLMail for 95 & NT (http://www.seattlelab.com/)



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