ietf-nntp GROUP Responses

[Charles Lindsey]

In <87wuz6k2io.fsf at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:


> Charles> P19. S9.1.1.1.1 (GROUP Responses)
> Charles> Some servers permit active file entries of the form
> Charles> 	comp.bar 00003456 4567 y
> Charles> 	comp.foo 00001234 2345 =comp.bar
> Charles> in which the group comp.foo is "aliased" onto comp.bar (and
> Charles> the low/high marks 00001234 and 2345 are actually redundant
> Charles> - see comp.bar for the true marks). In that case, if you
> Charles> give
> Charles> 	GROUP comp.foo
> Charles> I would expect the response
> Charles> 	211 1111 3456 4567 comp.bar

>have you tried this? last time I looked, INN did not do that. (In fact,
>it did not behave at all sensibly if you tried to read from an aliased
>group.)

> Charles> I think you should point out that this effect is legitimate
> Charles> with servers that do aliasing, and that clients that care
> Charles> about such aliasing can look out for it.

>aliasing is a can of worms that needs to be looked at in terms of what
>_does_ happen, not what you think currently happens.

If there is a consensus amongst implementations, and that consensus is
sensible, then we follow it. But if they all do it differently, then we
had better decide on a "proper way" and define it.

I still think what I have suggested above is the "proper way". I certainly
think it inevitable that the response has to give high and low water marks
from comp.bar in the above example. Actually, aliasing is so little used
that I doubt current clients would notice if we changed it. But we
certainly need to say _something_ in the draft.

But first, can we establish what INN and others actually DO?  

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