ietf-nntp Draft summary of IETF 48 meeting

[Charles Lindsey]

In <ylya27octo.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:


>Charles Lindsey <chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

>> What commands, if any, will require a space-separated list of wildmats?
>> Certainly not NEWNEWS. 

Well I have now scanned the draft, and the ONLY command with more than one
wildmat parameter (apart from the special case of NEWNEWS) is PAT.

>> If it is just PAT, can we have an explanation of
>> what is _supposed_ to happen? It would be simpler to do away with such
>> space-separated lists unless there is a clear example that needs them.

>Again, note that PAT as currently implemented (with XPAT) is *not* a
>space-separated list of separate wildmats.  The spaces are taken to be
>part of the pattern.

Ah! Well that's not what the durrect draft says, but it's what the
examples in the current draft imply :-( .

The syntax says ... [wildmat[ wildmat...]], which looks like space
separated wildmats to me. The text then says
            The output consists of one line for each article where the
	    relevant header line matches one or more of the wildmats.
which is in agreement with the ruling reported from the IETF meeting.

However, the example given:

                    [C] GROUP misc.test

                    [S] 211 1234 3000234 3002322 misc.test

                    [C] PAT Subject 3000234-300238 j* ? *est

                    [S] 221 Header Follows

                    [S] 3000234 I am just a test article

                    [S] 3000237 Re: I am just a test article

                    [S] .

seems to be saying "look for a 'j', follows by random stuff, followed by a
single-character-word-with-spaces-either-side, followed by random stuff,
followed by 'est'". This agrees with the implementation of XPAT as you
have described it (and also as described in the Common NNTP Extensions
draft), but is at variance with what the text says and with what the IETF
meeting ruled.

Moreover, both these interpretations are wrong according to our present
draft, because wildmats are supposed to be anchored at the start and end
of the text to be matched, so the draft should contain an explicit
exemption from the anchoring at this point.

>> No, that does not work. I believe the PAT command is a total mess,

and now you see why

>> but I
>> cannot suggest alternative texts for it, because I have not the
>> slightest clue as to what it is supposed to do. So does that mean I am
>> not allowed to raise it?

>I think it means that I (or someone else who knows how it works in
>practice now) am supposed to explain it to you clearly enough that you can
>offer replacement text.  I'm happy to try to do that; what questions do
>you have?

Quite simply, what is this command _supposed_ to do?

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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