ietf-nntp draft-ietf-nntpext-base-17

[Russ Allbery]

Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:
> Charles Lindsey said:

>>>> I think the active file is for technical stuff, of interest to
>>>> software and newsadmins. A normal user who wants to know what
>>>> newsgroups are available to him should be using the newsgroups file
>>>> (which is supposed to be the user-friendly version). Therefore it
>>>> SHOULD (if present at all) include at least all the groups available
>>>> to him on his server.

>> No, I am saying what I would _like_ the newsgroups file to contain in
>> the future. Hence the word "SHOULD", though I could live with "should".

> Hmm. Other opinions?

I think that "SHOULD" is ruling out widespread existing practice, which I
don't really see a justification for in this case, and "should" gets into
the sort of halfway handwaving that I think we should avoid.  Either it's
a protocol issue or it isn't.  If we're trying to provide useful
documentation for people writing NNTP software, which is more what I'm
worried about than attempts to change the world, I think we should be
clear that LIST NEWGROUPS isn't going to return the canonical list of
groups and they can't rely on it having any fixed relationship to the
active file.

(This is just a personal opinion, not a chair opinion.)

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