ietf-nntp Newsgroup Name Length Question

[Kenneth Herron]

>At 08:53 AM 1/15/97 -0800, Kenneth Herron wrote:
>>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?

We may actually be in agreement here.  NNTP imposes a minimum set of
requirements on newsgroup names by virtue of its command (and response,
e.g. LIST ACTIVE) syntax, and there is no quoting/escape convention for
groups with odd names.  I don't see that the NNTP spec needs to specify
anything beyond its minimum requirements though.  Documenting the
14-char-per-component limit, for example, would render a bunch of
perfectly working software noncompliant and may end up in conflict with
the final son-of-1036 spec besides, all to absolutely no point because
nntp doesn't have a compelling need to split names into components.
NNTP already has a "no such group" response which can be used for group
names which are valid nntp names but not valid to the underlying news
system.

Defining a group name as a non-empty sequence of characters not
including control characters, white space, wildmat wildcards, commas,
and whatever I've forgotten should be fine.