ietf-nntp Standardization of LIST OVERVIEW.FMT

[Russ Allbery]

Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> writes:

> The NNTP standard should standardize overview.fmt, but require that the
> first seven fields (excluding the Xref:full) MUST always be present and
> MUST always be in the order shown above (reference: the XOVER section
> RFC-2980), for compatibility with existing implementations.

Yes, that's a given.

Do you have an opinion over which form of standardization?  (In other
words, should the command only be implemented when the server can
guarantee consistency for the whole overview database, or standardized in
the current form?)  I'm guessing that requiring that it only be
implemented when consistency can be guaranteed is a non-starter based on
other information I'm getting about how clients are using the command
right now, but I'd still be interested in gathering more opinions and
preferences.

> (Should the standard also mention the problem of TAB characters in the
> original headers? Just as a reminder to the implementor. TAB is the
> field delimiter in XOVER output, so it cannot be used in the headers
> themselves. Leafnode just replaces any TAB with SPC in [X]OVER output.)

Yup, that's in there.

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