ietf-nntp New HDR text (with metadata)

[Russ Allbery]

Clive D W Feather <clive at on-the-train.demon.co.uk> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes

>> 9.5.3  The HDR Extension

> A few nit-picks for you.

Thanks, incorporated as below into my local working copy.

>>  The required header parameter is the name of a
>>  header (e.g. "subject") in an article,

> without the trailing colon,

Added with a bit of reordering so that the English flows more smoothly.

>>  If the article is specified by message-id rather than by article
>>  range, the article number is given as "0".  If the requested header is
>>  not present in the article or if it is present but empty, a line for
>>  that article is included in the output but the header content portion
>>  of the line is empty.

> Does a space follow the number or not in this case?

I think it should not, since that actually allows a way to distinguish
between a missing and empty header (albeit in a subtle way that's unlikely
to be widely used).

>> 9.5.3.1.1  Responses
>> 
>>      225  Headers follow (multiline response)
>>      412  No newsgroup selected
>>      420  No article selected
>>      423  No article with that number

> or range contains no articles.

I think that description incorporates both; the text clarifies.

I'll repost my HDR text once we've reached a consensus on whether a range
containing no articles should return an empty result or should return a
423 error.

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