ietf-nntp new draft of the NNTP spec released

[Stan O. Barber]

Thanks for the gentle reminder. 

Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 
> In <199906270713.CAA03782 at academ.com> sob at academ.com (Stan Barber) writes:
> 
> >I have mailed another release of the NNTP spec to the Internet Draft folks.
> 
> >An advance copy is available at this URL:
> 
> >ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/ietf/nntpext.txt
> 
> >This version contains some corrections, grammer fixes and lots of examples.
> 
> >Comments welcome.
> 
> Well I am most disappointed in this new draft. All that has changed AFAICS is
> 
> 1. Lots of examples have been added, which is good.
> 
> 2. The LIST SUBSCRIPTIONS command has been removed (but it is still
> present in the syntax in section 13)
> 
> 3. A new response code (430) has been added to the PAT command
> 
> 4. Chris Lewis has been added to the list of acknowledgements.
> 
> And that seems to be it. Not much to show for 6 months work.
> 
> In the meantime, several serious deficiencies, which were discussed on this
> list last December, have STILL not been fixed. In particular, the new '!'
> feature of the wildmat is a total shambles. It is quite impossible to
> deduce its semantics from the draft, nor how it works with the NEWNEWS
> command. I gave a full account of these problems way back on December 9th,
> and assurances were given that they were going to be discussed at a
> forthcoming meeting, and a revised draft would appear in February. It is
> now July, and STILL these glaring deficiencies are being ignored.
> 
> Here, in case you missed it, is what I wrote in December, as retrieved
> from the website. You should also look at contributions nntp.01141.txt,
> nntp.01186.txt and nntp.01192.txt from the archives. And then can we have
> some progress, please?
> 
> Re: ietf-nntp new draft available
> 
> Charles Lindsey (chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
> Wed, 9 Dec 1998 13:57:11 GMT
> 
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>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> In <199812080001.SAA10373 at academ.com> sob at academ.com (Stan Barber) writes:
> 
> >I apologize for being so late with this draft. This is the one we will
> discuss
> >tomorrow afternoon at IETF.
> 
> >ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/ietf/nntpext.txt
> 
> >DIFFS:
> >ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/ietf/nntpext-diffs.txt
> 
> The diffs is actually longer than the original :-( .
> 
> Some comments on the three main changes:
> 
> 1. '!' allowed in wildmats.
> ---------------------------
> 
> Yes, this is good (I have been asking for it long enough, for use in the
> NEWNEWS command). However, the text describing it is hopelessly inadequate
> and ambiguous. All it says is:
> 
> The fifth operation uses the
> exclamation mark (!) preceding any valid expression built
> using any of the operators discussed prior to this sentence.
> 
> Nothing even to say what the semantics are of '!'. Moreover, this wording
> suggests, and the syntax in Section 13 confirms, that there may be
> multiple occurrences of '!' in a wildmat.
> 
> So I can presumably say:
> 
> LIST NEWSGROUPS !alt.*
> 
> with the "obviously" intended effect, but what about
> 
> LIST NEWSGROUPS alt.!binaries.*
> 
> or worse
> 
> LIST NEWSGROUPS alt.!binaries.*!erotica*
> 
> That one can be parsed in two ways, so do or do I not get to see
> alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.animals?
> 
> Now to the NEWNEWS command:
> 
> NEWNEWS !news.announce.conferences
> 
> presumably means every known newsgroup except the one mentioned, but
> 
> NEWNEWS news.announce.*,!news.announce.conferences
> 
> just gives me news.announce.important, news.announce.newgroups, and
> news.announce.newusers (I know that, because I use it in my own feed). So
> what about
> 
> NEWNEWS !news.announce.conferences,news.announce.*
> 
> Who can tell? Certainly not the draft as currently written.
> 
> I suspect that what we actually need is for '!' to be restricted to the
> start of a wildmat, and for it to only remove matches already made in an
> earlier entry in the case of NEWNEWS.
> 
> Or alternatively to have a ',' operator, allowing me to say
> 
> LIST NEWSGROUPS alt.*,!alt.binaries.*
> 
> But in the end I suspect that compatibility with existing INN practice is
> what we really want, so it would be useful to document what that is. Is
> Rich Salz listening?
> 
> Also, some more adventurous examples in section 5.1 might help.
> 
> And finally, there is a definite Bug in the syntax, where it says
> 
> newnews-command = "NEWNEWS" 1*WSP newsgroup *("," newsgroup) ...
> newsgroup = parameter
> parameter = 1*(%x21-FF)
> 
> Surely that should be
> 
> newsgroup = wildmat
> 
> 2. 502 response.
> ----------------
> 
> The response
> 502 Service unavailable
> has now been added to the ARTICLE, HEAD, BODY and STAT commands. I note
> that some other commands allow
> 502 no permission
> (OVER and PAT). I think "no permission" might be more appropriate for the
> ARTICLE lot as well, since that is the actual situation in which INN gives
> it (you find an article with NEWNEWS, and when you try to retrieve it you
> find it is a net.* article which you are not allowed to see).
> 
> Also, I would have expected a 502 response from the GROUP command in such
> a situation.
> 
> 3. Distributions.
> -----------------
> 
> This optional parameter has disappeared from the NEWNEWS command (as
> promised).
> 
> However, you should know that the USEFOR group has been trying to
> strengthen the Distribution header in grandson-of-1036. One can see
> applications of it if, for example, mass cancellers and Nocem-issuers
> could include a Distribution header indicating which major hierarchies
> were included in each particular article. Trouble is, if you are
> interested in Nocems for a small hierarchy (like uk.*) you still need to
> download the whole of news.lists.filters, which is a massive job for a
> telephone-line feed, and if you want to see cancels you have to call for
> the whole of control.cancel.
> 
> However, one of Brad's pet ideas is for individual newsreaders to be
> configurable as to what distributions they will accept, and that would
> need a Distribution parameter in the ARTICLE command and friends :-( .
> 
> Note also that USEFOR has also proposed negative distributions (with '!'
> in front).
> 
> 4. Miscellaneous.
> -----------------
> 
> I find the description of the LISTGROUP command a little vague. Are the
> article numbers returned supposed to be on 1 line, on on successive lines?
> 
> And the PAT command does not actually say that the 'pat's are wildmats
> (though the syntax in section 13 does). It would be better to say
> "[wildmat [wildmat...]]" in 9.4.10. ALso, it is not clear what is to
> happen if there are more than one of them. Do the headers returned have to
> satisfy ALL of them or ONE of them?
> 
> --
> Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
> Email:     chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
> Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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