ietf-nntp HDR

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Russ Allbery said:
>> So do we (using Lines as an example)
[...]
> There is a fourth option which we should consider, namely
> 
>   d) define HDR Lines and HDR Bytes to be special exceptions that return
>      the overview information rather than article headers, thereby making
>      the actual Lines: and Bytes: headers in the articles, if any, not
>      retrievable by HDR.

This is a special-case kludge. As a general rule, these are a bad idea.

It's possible to produce a generalised solution - a 'I want metadata, not
header data' flag - fairly simply. Why is your proposal better ? What
happens when people want to add further types of metadata ?

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