ietf-nntp Section 7.1 - GREETING step.

[Charles Lindsey]

In <HaOggyARXxf5QANe at turnpike.com> Paul Overell <paulo at turnpike.com> writes:


>In article <FyAqnK.JFE at clw.cs.man.ac.uk>, Charles Lindsey
><chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes
>>Well a logical solution would be to say
>>       200     you may only read
>>       201     you may POST
>>       202     you may IHAVE
>>       203     you may do BOTH
>>

>Did you mean to reverse the meaning of 200/201?

Arrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhh!

Let's try again:

>>       200     you may (try to) do anything
>>       201     you may not POST
>>       202     you may not IHAVE
>>       203     you may not do EITHER

So how would current clients be affected if servers suddenly started doing
that?

Reading clients who test for 200 would be unaffected (if they did not see
it, they would deduce "no posting").
Reading clients who test for 201 would erroneously suppose they could post
if they saw 203 (but a posting attempt would fail with 440).
Reading clients that complained about unexpected responses would complain
(though if they just treated unknown responses as generic 2xx, as they
should, then the worst that would happen would be 440 to a POST).

Relaying clients are currently not supposed to get anything useful from
this response at all. However, if they were in the habit of treating 201
as "you may not IHAVE" they might get some unexpected 437 responses.

So it would appear that some existing clients might be confused to the
extend of being tricked into trying things that were destined to fail, but
it would not amount to imminent death of Usenet.

-- 
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
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