ietf-nntp HDR parameter proposal

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20030320102144.GF356 at finch-staff-1.thus.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:

>(we could perhaps add:

>    BASEX  = BASE + XREF
>)

That's getting dangerously near having "any header you mention here will
work", which is exactly what Russ did not like about my original proposal
last year. My view is that Xref is sufficiently unimportant not to make a
special case of it.


>I would lean towards saying that "HDR" with no parameters means "will
>accept any header name or metadata item it knows about". I'm assuming
>there's no backwards-compatibility issue here; if there is, then use
>"HDR *" for this case and make "HDR" equivalent to "HDR +".

No, I think it is important to have the ALL parameter for that case. HDR
without parameter means "I promise nothing; try it, and good luck if it
works for you". "ALL" provides a strong committment to do the complete
thing.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5