ietf-nntp Draft summary of IETF 48 meeting

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Russ Allbery said:
>> I have no problem with the "grody way". What is the problem with message
>> IDs and ranges?
> 
> Hm.  I guess it wasn't due to that.  Never mind; it's just weird but I
> understand what it's doing now.  It lists either the message ID or the
> article number depending on which one the client searched for.
[...]
>> Yes, I see the problem with returning an article number, since there may
>> not even exist a current group if a message-ID had been given.
> 
> It should return a message ID if a message ID was specified.  If an
> article range was specified, I think it makes more sense to return article
> numbers;

Can I suggest that it should do the same as ARTICLE et al do for the first
parameter of the response ? That is, return article number when article
numbers were given in the command, and return "0" when a message ID was
given. After all, in this case you know what the ID was, and doing it this
way simplifies the parsing of the result. It also means that a long message
ID won't be a problem (the ID can be over 200 characters long, after all).

In other words, the response line(s) should always be a number followed by
a space and then arbitrary text.

I note that the header name isn't returned in the examples. Is that
correct and desirable ?

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:  +44 20 8371 1138
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