ietf-nntp Re: OVER extension

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Charles Lindsey said:
>> There was a suggestion that OVER could take a message-ID. This would need
>> to be optional; to allow it, include the lines prefixed with $, while to
>> forbid it exclude those lines.
> I raised that issue because it looked like an inconsistency. But, having
> heard the replies, I think it would be better to leave it out.

I'm a little loath to remove it without further opinions. After all, it
would be completely upwards compatible.

>>  A field may be empty (in which case there will be two adjacent US-ASCII
>>  tabs), and a sequence of trailing US-ASCII tabs may be omitted.
>                                               ^^^^
> 					      TABs
> 
> But I don't think trailing TABs can ever arise as you have defined things.
> Certainly they do not arise from empty non-obligatory fields. If you want
> to be able to omit trailing empty non-obligatory fields, then you need an
> explict rule to say so.

This is a bit I'm not clear about and I can't resolve without more input.

My reading of the current specification, *and* the manual page that was
presented to us, is that if an article doesn't contain the relevant header
then the field should be blank.

*NOT* just contain the header name. Blank.

After all, we don't say anywhere that a header with no data is *always*
equivalent to a lack of header. Does Usefor ?

>>  The byte count and line count MUST be decimal integers. They MUST
>>  count the entire article, both header and body.

> You need to include a warning against believing any genuine Lines header
> that may be present.

There's a statement in LIST OVERVIEW.FMT that they're not related. But I've
added possible text.

>> [Possible addition]
>> ? Alternatively, a server MAY treat a lone LF - both here and in the line
>> ? count - as if it were CRLF.
> No, I think I take the view that lone CR and LF are not valid anywhere in
> the NNTP stream.

In fact you're correct; section 4 contains an explicit statement to that
effect.

>>  9.5.2.1.2 Examples
> I would advise against using X-NNTP-Posting-Host as your example because
> a) The commonly used header is actually NNTP-Posting-Host (no 'X-'), and
> b) Usefor is trying to phase out that usage anyway.

Okay.

> Xref would be a good example to use or, if you want one that may sometimes
> be absent, you could try Distribution, or Sender, or Content-Type.

I do. So Distribution, I think.

>>  9.5.2.2 LIST OVERVIEW.FMT
>>  This command MUST generate the same results throughout a session.
> Why?

What does it mean for the order of the trailing fields if it doesn't ?

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:  +44 20 8371 1138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | Fax:  +44 20 8371 4037
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