ietf-nntp Re: OVER extension

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Charles Lindsey said:
>> 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).

Okay, I've reworded that bit in my proposal:

  The byte count and line count MUST be decimal integers. They MUST
  count the entire article, both header and body. The line count is
  the number of US-ASCII CRLF pairs, each of which counts as two bytes.
  These values MUST be returned; the corresponding fields MUST NOT be
  empty.
[Possible addition]
? Note: even if an article contains a Lines: or Bytes: header, the server
? MUST NOT trust it but must generate its own value.

  For the five mandatory headers, the content of each field MUST be
  based on the original header with the header name and following colon
  and space removed. If the article does not contain that header, or if
  there is nothing following the colon and space, the field MUST be
  empty.

  For all subsequent fields the content MUST be based on the entire
  header, including the name. In every case, the header is processed
  by first removing all US-ASCII CRLF pairs and then replacing each
  remaining US-ASCII NUL, TAB, CR, or LF character with a single
  US-ASCII space (for example, CR LF LF TAB will become two spaces). If
  there is no such header in the article, the field MUST be empty. If
  the header exists but has nothing following the colon and space, the
  field MUST NOT be empty.

> 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.

Fine, but we should still allow for it.

>>>>  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.

QED.

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Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:  +44 20 8371 1138
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