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

[Charles Lindsey]

Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>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.

Indeed. However, it has been suggested (and could be useful) to add a
server as in
	news://unusual.server.com/example.test
meaning "try and make connection to that server instead of to your normal
server in order to view that group/article". Useful if you want to look
for some unusual group that is only carried on a few servers.

And it might be useful to allow Userid and password parameters also, as in
some other URLs, such as ftp (except that some more general SASL based
mechanism is needed for URLs in general, and I haven't seen one yet).

>  The other is:
>
>    nntp://news.stanford.edu/example.test/345

which is indeed a different situation entirely, since you need to know
already the article number on that server, which is unlikely unless you
regularly use that server for that group. So it is hardly the sort of URL
you would want to publish in a web page. But it may well be useful for
other purposes.
>
>Confusing the two in the syntax that was in that I-D is a bad idea.

Yes, that I-D has them totally muddled up.

>
>
>> 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.

I think it might have been if the matter had been put before us 6 months
ago. My concern is that it would be better for any URL for news/nntp to be
devised by people with a good knowledge of news/nntp rather than by
someone just trying to tidy up a bunch of random URL definitions.

Anyway, no response from Paul yet (he should have seen where I had set the
Reply-to).

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