ietf-nntp Dropping the Distribution option from Newnews?

[Jonathan Grobe]

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, Brian Kantor wrote:
> It's only now with Stan et al that there will be a new
> RFC that reflects the reality of current practice.  So if something isn't
> compliant with RFC977, don't condem the code - it might well be an
> improvement.  (What do you expect from a protocol designed by a couple of
> undergrads?)  Internet Lesson#1: standardise working code, not design ideas.

First, Brian, I would have appreciated a comment on the original question:
Should the Distribution option be dropped? Is it too little benefit to be
worth the trouble implementing it?

Here is Stan's current description. As I read it, is corresponds to what
you said the original intent was, rather than as what Jon says is the
current implementation in INN, and should thus be revised:


          12.4 NEWNEWS

            NEWNEWS newsgroups date time [GMT] [<distributions>]

            A list of message-ids of articles posted or received to the
            specified news group since "date" will be listed. The format
            of the listing will be one message-id per line, as though text
            were being sent.  A single line consisting solely of one
            period followed by CR-LF will terminate the list.

            Date and time are in the same format as the NEWGROUPS command.
            The newsgroups parameter must be in wildmat format and may
            consist of multiple wildmat constructs separated by a US-ASCII
            comma character.

            The optional parameter "distributions" is a list of
            distribution groups, enclosed in angle brackets.  If
            specified, the distribution portion of an article's header
            will be examined for a match with the distribution categories
            listed, and only those articles which have a distribution in
            the list will be listed.  If more than one distribution is to
            be supplied, they must be separated by commas within the angle
            brackets.

            The use of the IHAVE, NEWNEWS, and NEWGROUPS commands to
            distribute news is discussed in an earlier part of this
            document.

            Note that an empty list (i.e., the text body returned by this
            command consists only of the terminating period) is a possible
            valid response, and indicates that there is currently no new
            news.


          12.4.1 Responses

               230 list of new articles by message-id follows