ietf-nntp OVER extension

[Russ Allbery]

Andrew Gierth <andrew at erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:

> I'm somewhat against having OVER <id>. It adds relatively little
> functionality as compared to HEAD, and it doesn't really make sense from
> an implementation point of view either in the client or the server.

Yeah, that's all true.

> (for one thing, the process of taking an article header and turning it
> into overview-format data is normally done when the article is stored,
> which is likely to be an entirely separate program, rather than when it
> it read.)

Also true, and actually if the overview generation implementation in the
server puts that stuff into a database as separate keys or the like, it
actually does something completely different than turning article headers
into overview suitable for dumping to the client.

Okay, I'm now leaning against including this.  (It still doesn't make
sense to me to include it but make it optional.)

>>> $      First form (optional range specified):

>>> 224   Overview information follows (multi-line response)
>>> 412   No newsgroup currently selected
>>> 423   No article(s) selected

>  Russ> That should be 420, and you're missing the 430 (no such article
>  Russ> number) response here.

> 420 is "no current article", i.e. you did OVER without specifying a
> range, where no current article pointer is set. 423 would be if you
> specified an article number or range that didn't exist (though see
> other discussion).

Ah, yeah, right.

> 430 is only for when a message-id is specified.

Sorry about the confusion of mine there.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>