ietf-nntp HDR parameter proposal

[Russ Allbery]

Charles Lindsey <chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk> writes:

> New Proposal for parameter to HDR extension.
> --------------------------------------------

> I have raised this previously, and Russ even stated he could live with
> it.

I can live with it in the sense that I don't think it will break anything
badly, but I don't think it's a good idea.

You're including a potentially very long list of headers in LIST
EXTENSIONS to handle a case that's not particularly desirable in the first
place and that the client can easily recognize via other means.
Implementing this adds a fair amount of complexity, and it also adds
complexity to the specification to handle things like ALL and OVERVIEW.
(What if there's an All: or Overview: header that you want to put into
your limited HDR database?)

It also requires keeping LIST OVERVIEW.FMT, which I think is a bad idea.
I'll post about LIST OVERVIEW.FMT in a separate message.

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