ietf-nntp Single-group LIST NEWSGROUPS isn't efficient

[Russ Allbery]

Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>  Russ> My worry is that it might encourage a client to send multiple
>  Russ> individual LIST NEWSGROUPS commands rather than one wildmat
>  Russ> expression presuming that this would be faster for the server.
>  Russ> For LIST ACTIVE, it probably is, but for LIST NEWSGROUPS with INN
>  Russ> (and I believe reference NNTP) at least, it's considerably
>  Russ> slower.

> I think for a client it's a catch-22. What use do common clients make
> of the descriptions anyway?

Pnews uses them as part of its final sanity check of "do you really want
to post to these newsgroups."  I believe tin displays them as part of the
summary of newsgroups.

Pnews just sends a LIST NEWSGROUPS to pull down the entire list and then
greps through it locally, though, and I believe many clients still use
XGTITLE, since for a long time I believe it was more widely supported than
LIST NEWSGROUPS with wildmat expressions.

I don't know what commands the current version of tin sends.

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