ietf-nntp draft-hoffman-rfc1738bis-01.txt

[Charles Lindsey]

> Abstract 
>  
> This document specifies many Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) schemes
> that were originally specified in RFC 1738 [RFC1738]. Some of these
> schemes are specified more fully in this document. The purpose of
> this document is to allow RFC 1738 to be moved to historic while keeping
> the information about the schemes on standards track.



> 2.4. news and nntp
> 
> The news and nntp URL schemes are used to refer to either news groups or
> individual articles of USENET news, as specified in RFC 1036.
> 
> A news URL takes one of two forms:
> 
>    newsURL      =  scheme ":" [ news-server ] [ refbygroup | message ]
>    scheme       =  "news" | "nntp"
>    news-server  =  "//" server "/"
>    refbygroup   = group [ "/" messageno [ "-" messageno ] ]
>    messageno    = local-part "@" domain
> 
> A <group> is a period-delimited hierarchical name, such as
> "comp.infosystems.www.misc". A <messageno> corresponds to the
> Message-ID of section 2.1.5 of RFC 1036, without the enclosing "<"
> and ">"; it takes the form <unique>@<full_domain_name>.  A message
> identifier may be distinguished from a news group name by the
> presence of the commercial at "@" character. No additional characters
> are reserved within the components of a news URL.
> 
> If <newsgroup-name> is "*" (as in <URL:news:*>), it is used to refer
> to "all available news groups".

No, I don't think that is right at all. It is certainly not the same as
RFC 1738.

1. You have included a news-server option. That is fine, but what is the
syntax? Presumably an IP address or a domain name, but what about a port
number (119 by default, certainly for the nntp case). I don't think this
feature has been defined anywhere, but I gather it is in use.

2. What is the difference, if any, between the news and nntp schemes? Is
the nntp scheme completely new, and is it in current use?

3. I think you are thoroughly confused between 'message' and 'message
number'. I believe you should have written

     message = local-part "@" domain

Certainly, a Message-ID has no place within a 'reftogroup'. Maybe you
meant the article identifier by which an article is identified within a
particular group on a particular server, in which case it should be an
integer, and in that case the option of giving a range of integers makes
sense. But again, this is new wrt RFC 1738. Is it known to be in current
use anywhere? Note that, under Usefor, an article identifier need not
be a number (we left it open for "unusual implementations", but in all
known systems, including NNTP, it is indeed an integer).

CCed to both the Usefor and NNTP mailing lists. Replies to the NNTP
list. In fact the new NNTP draft might be a good place for the formal
definition of this URL, except that we are just on the brink of Last
Call.



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