ietf-nntp HDR

[Andrew Gierth]

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

 Russ> There is a fourth option which we should consider, namely

 Russ> d) define HDR Lines and HDR Bytes to be special exceptions
 Russ> that return the overview information rather than article
 Russ> headers, thereby making the actual Lines: and Bytes: headers
 Russ> in the articles, if any, not retrievable by HDR.

 >> what about servers that don't have an overview? (I don't think diablo
 >> does, as I recall it stores the actual headers of the article in its
 >> index). These would have to work around the issue by "fixing" the
 >> Lines: header so that it showed the correct value.

 Russ> They could return 503 for HDR requests for those headers.

that's not nice, because it means that clients can't rely on "HDR Lines"
working (which it should).

Actually, I think that making OVER work right in such cases involves
fixing the Lines: header too.

I'm just wary of special-case kludges like this.

-- 
Andrew.