ietf-nntp Message from Chin Chee-Kai

[Russ Allbery]

Stan O Barber <sob at verio.net> writes:

> 1. Adding an optional integer argument to NEXT and LAST, to specify
> the "step" to NEXT or LAST to.

This sounds like an interesting protocol extension, although I'm not sure
if anyone actually uses NEXT or LAST much.  The advent of threaded news
readers makes those commands not usually what you want; instead, the
client obtains all the overview information and then decides which
articles to retrieve by number.

Regardless, though, again I think this is out of scope for this working
group.  The goal of this working group is to document existing practice,
plus add an extension mechanism and possibly authentication support.
Given that it's already a good bit over schedule, I think it's really
important that we focus on the working group charter and set aside even
very good suggestions for protocol extensions unless they're part of
current existing practice.

> 2. For some commands, the notion of how the "current article pointer"
> (CAP) should be handled is unspecified or unclear.  It is good to be
> specific as to how the CAP should be handled.  More specifically:

> [===========
>    3.1.2 ARTICLE (selection by number)
>    ....
>    .... 3rd paragraph
>    The internally-maintained "current article pointer" is set by this
>    command if a valid article number is specified.
> ===========]

> suggested change:

> [===========
>    The internally-maintained "current article pointer" is set by this
>    command if a valid article number is specified.  Otherwise the
>    pointer remains unchanged.
> ===========]

I agree with this change.

> and also 

> [===========
>    3.4.1 IHAVE
>    3.6.1 LIST
>    3.7.1 NEWGROUPS
>    3.8.1 NEWNEWS
>    3.10.1.  POST
>    3.12.1.  SLAVE
>    ....
>    .... just before their corresponding .2 sections,
> ===========]

> suggested change:

> [===========
>    The internally-maintained "current article pointer" remains unchanged.
> ===========]

This too.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>