ietf-nntp DRAFT summary of IETF 49

[Russell Vincent]

On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 02:55:42PM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Changing to reader mode is pretty easy to do.  Being able to change both
> directions requires file descriptor passing and is considerably more
> complex.  I'm not aware of any split implementation that does this.  (It's
> also never used in practice, so there doesn't seem to be any real reason
> to write the code to support it.)

Just to put another slant on this. Diablo reader mode cannot switch back
to a feeder mode because the feeder code doesn't even have to exist on
a machine that handles client connections only. I have never come across
a need for it to be done.

Interestingly enough, Diablo uses an extension of the MODE command
to switch to a "header-only" feed, which is the way the reader mode
finds out that articles exist. This is probably out of the scope of
the discussion, however.

I would go with Russ Allbery's latest proposed text. It fits with
my understanding of the MODE command and its widespread use.

 -Russell