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

[Russ Allbery]

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

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

Currently, there are two separate URI forms in common use.  One of them
is:

    news:example.test
    news:example.*
    news:87ekwwsm94.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu

and are distinguished as described.  The other is:

    nntp://news.stanford.edu/example.test/345

Confusing the two in the syntax that was in that I-D is a bad idea.
They're used for two distinct purposes; the nntp one is specific to a
particular server, and the news one is portable to any news server.

> 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?

Yes, but not very widespread use.

> 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.

Good heavens, no.  It can live quite comfortably in either its own
document or in a URI document that includes various other less-used URI
forms.

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