[ietf-nntp] OVER message-id

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Russ Allbery said:
>>> At some point we put "OVER message-id" back into the protocol.  Andrew
>>> from Supernews is objecting to this, saying that it's impractical in
>>> "every major server design".

> Anyway, given that OVER on message IDs is an innovation of this working
> group that we added based on a few people saying it would be useful rather
> than based on existing practice, and given the stage that we're at with
> this draft, I think we should just drop OVER on message IDs again and not
> spend a bunch of time on this.  Servers can easily add it as an extension
> since it doesn't conflict with the base command grammar, and if it turns
> out to be a common extension, we can revisit it in a future standard
> revision.

Can I suggest that we make it optional instead? That way we don't lose the
work done on it and, far more importantly, we ensure that people handle the
subtleties (e.g. returning a message number of 0) in a consistent manner.

>>> He suggests, instead, an extension to NEWNEWS that would return
>>> overview fields along with the message-ids.

I presume we're not working on this right now, but leaving it for a future
project?

How do we handle the HDR cases that Andrew mentioned?

    HDR Xref <message-id>
    HDR :lines <message-id>

If we're going to live with it then I suggest:

(1) We need text saying that you can get 503 with message-id even if the
header is available with article number.
(2) LIST HEADERS ought to distinguish these cases (e.g. by putting "-<>"
or "NOMSGID" in the output for those headers:

    [C] LIST HEADERS
    [S] 215 headers and metadata items supported:
    [S] Date
    [S] Distribution
    [S] From
    [S] Message-ID
    [S] References
    [S] Subject
    [S] -<> Xref
    [S] -<> :bytes
    [S] -<> :lines
    [S] .

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Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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