ietf-nntp Alternative HDR parameter proposal

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Ken Murchison said:
>> The problem here is that while the possible headers are unlimited, and you
>> have to look in the articles, the metadata available *has* to be defined by
>> the server.
>> Therefore I suggest that there be a different response code (216?) for the
>> ALL case, which lists only those metadata items supported by the server;
>> it would be required to include :lines and :bytes.
> Hmm.  If it is necessary to enumerate the metadata regardless of which 
> headers are supported,

Which it is, because of where the metadata is created.

> perhaps we ditch the ALL capability keyword.

I still think it's a useful thing to have - if you don't want metadata,
it saves the need for a LIST HEADERS.

> We 
> can either use a different LIST HEADERS response code in the ALL case 
> (as you suggest above), or a special keyword in the 215 response, eg:
> 
> C> LIST HEADERS
> S> 215 headers follow:
> S> *                   <= means all headers
> S> :lines
> S> :bytes
> S> .

I'm not particularly bothered - the two are functionally equivalent.
Someone needs to make a decision, though.

It does make me think, though - in the non-ALL case, do we want to require
all headers before all metadata items? If we take your approach to the ALL
case I think it would be useful to require the * to be either first or
last.

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