ietf-nntp "Common NNTP Extensions" document updated

[Vincent Archer]

On Sun, Nov 30, 1997 at 09:24:08AM +0000, Tom Hughes wrote:
> For some value of better maybe. Personally I consider NEWNEWS a
> better solution for passive feeds and the other article number
> based methods better for online readers.
> 
> Using NEWNEWS makes it easy for me to wind back my last fetch
> time if I hear of an interesting discussion in a group I don't
> normally take, or to do selective catchup when I return from
> a break - I can do a full catchup of announce groups but just
> get the last day or two of other groups.

I have a site that rely on passive feeds a lot, for various "historical"
reasons, notably the fact that I'm using a laptop which is only
infrequently connected to the network. I've discussed firsthand with the
admin at the other end on when NEWNEWS was to be used, and the answer was,
after a few tries, "never".

Following that, I rewrote a pumper, code-name "shadok" that does exactly what
the common wisdom says : XHDR Message-Id (which, under INN, uses the overview
base), then reading of individual articles.

Having all articles grouped within the same newsgroup also means that you are
using a lot less inode seeks (you're staying in the same directory), as
opposed to massive

> It also makes it easy to fill in gaps in the feed from other
> servers. That can be done with other methods but it means tracking
> the article number high water marks for all the servers as well
> as a history of fetched article IDs.

You are already doing this in your server.

> The point is that when I'm fetching news the question I want
> to ask the server is "what articles have arrived in these
> groups [the groups I take] since this time [the time I last
> fetched news]". That is exactly what NEWNEWS asks.

But this means that, instead of keeping track of high water, you have to keep
track of dates for each group. Plus the hassle of synchronising your date
with that of the server at the exact instant you are doing NEWNEWS (else
you could end up asking for the same article at the end of a session, then at
the beginning of another).

In short, NEWNEWS *as a concept* offers only *one* advantage over XHDR: it
does cross-group reporting, so you can request the Message-Ids of a whole
cluster of groups (say comp.sys.sun.*) instead of each.

-- 
Vincent ARCHER  -=-=-  Herve Schauer Consultants -=-=-   archer at hsc.fr
Tel: +33 1 41 40 97 00                          Fax: +33 1 41 40 97 09
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