ietf-nntp Re: OVER extension

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20020107102225.GT38062 at finch-staff-1.demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:


>Charles Lindsey said:
>> 
>> 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.

OK, on a careful re-read of the present text I can see that was the
intention. But the wording should be rewritten to remove all doubt (and in
particular it should say that "A field may be emtpy ..." is speaking of
an absent header rather than an empty one).

>*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 ?

Son-of-1036 took a dim view of empty headers. USEFOR does not forbid them,
but it carefully ensures that it does not define any headers that could be
empty.


>>>  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 ?

Touché.

-- 
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