wildmats (was: Re: ietf-nntp Draft summary of IETF 48 meeting)

[Charles Lindsey]

In <874s4sawib.fsf at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:

>On the other hand, a new client that uses LIST ACTIVE foo*,bar*
>expecting to get all foo* groups and all bar* groups will fail to
>work on old servers.

Well that command would fail under the present spec, so introducing the
change loses you no functionality that was working already.

So under the new regime, you might find that you local neighbourhood
server did not yet support the extension. So, you must refrain from using
the feature. But it is a bit dog-in-the-manger to insist that nobody else
should be allowed to use it either.

The new USEFOR draft is full of new functionality that will not become
available to everybody from day one. I see no problem there so long as all
existing functionality continues to work.

>UTF-8 is a necessary change, commas in wildmats are not. We should not
>be introducing changes that are neither compatible with existing
>practice nor absolutely necessary.

UTF-8 is a similar case. If you try using it with existing servers, you
may find it does not work. So what? You have lost nothing.

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