ietf-nntp LIST NEWSGROUPS

[Charles Lindsey]

In <3F0C2900.3020606 at oceana.com> Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:

>Charles Lindsey wrote:

>> The term "Newsgroups File" is well ingrained into common parlance, e.g in
>> the phrase "For your newsgroups file" (case sensitive) which appears in
>> all newgroup messages and is recognized and processed by all(?) news
>> servers. It ain't broke ... .
>> 
>> Likewise "active file".

>True, but neither of these have anything to do with the wire protocol. 
>These are adminitrative things.

Yes, but if the standard uses the term "newsgroups file" for whatever sits
behind the LIST NEWSGROUPS command (beacuse that's the term people
understand), then is any implementor really going to say "Oh Dear! That
means I am not allowed to keep my newsgroups information in a magical
database all shared with and cross-referenced to my active
file^H^H^H^Hinfo".

I don't think implementors are that stupid, though we did have some
nit-pickers on USEFOR who looked at the bit saying "an injecting agent
injects an article in the following steps" and said "Aarrrgh! you have
forced implementors to do things in a fixed order", and we had to write in
the usual paragraph about "any sequence of steps which achieves the same
effect". And then they all complain that USEFOR is getting too long :-( .

As you say, it does not really matter, but that may not silence the
nit-pickers.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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