ietf-nntp Section 11.5 - NEWNEWS

[Clive D.W. Feather]

[Old thread; it's now 11.4.]

Andrew Gierth said:
>  David> The NEWGROUPS command accepts both GMT and UTC as keywords.
>  David> NEWNEWS should probably support both keywords as well.
>  David> (Currently, only GMT is listed.)
> 
> I mentioned this before. Existing practice is to recognise only GMT
> for both commands; introducing UTC has no benefit other than to
> satisfy pedants.

Furthermore, anyone on the Austin Group lists will see that there's a lot
of debate as to whether "Posix time" is UTC, UT1, TAI, or none of the
above.

Can I suggest the following changes ?

DATE:

  DATE
  This command exists to help clients find out the current time
  from the server's perspective.  This command SHOULD NOT be
  used as a substitute for NTP[7], but to provide information
! that might be useful when using the NEWGROUPS and NEWNEWS commands
! (see sections 11.3 and 11.4).
  
  This command returns a one-line response code of 111 followed
! by the date and time on the server in the form
  YYYYMMDDhhmmss.

+ The date and time are given in the server's approximation to UT
+ (otherwise known as GMT). The server is not required to track leap
+ seconds or UT/TAI/UTC variations exactly, nor need the server's clock
+ be accurate to within 1 second.


NEWGROUPS:

! NEWGROUPS date time [GMT]

[...]

! The token "GMT" specifies that the date and time are
! given in the server's approximation to UT (see the DATE command).
! If the token "GMT" is omitted then
  the date and time are specified in the server's local
  timezone. Note that there is no way within this specification
  of NNTP to establish the server's local timezone.

[...]

! Clients SHOULD make all queries using the "GMT" token when
  possible.

The last change would also be made to NEWNEWS.

> (Note: we should probably add some qualifications to make it easier:
> specifically, an explicit statement that the output of NEWNEWS is
> not ordered, and may contain duplicates.)

The unordered bit is in there, but it has:

  Each message-id SHALL appear only once in a response.

I'd agree with you that it should be changed to:

! A message-id MAY appear more than once in a response.

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