[ietf-nntp] draft-hoffman-rfc1738bis-02.txt

[Charles Lindsey]

This draft has now appeared, and contains no advance on the previous
version, so far as the news and nntp schemes are concerned. The relevant
text within it is:

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".


all of which bears no resemblance to what is done in practice, or to
anything that might work. Somebody needs to contact Paul about this (but
probably not me - perhaps Russ).

-- 
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 clerew.man.ac.uk      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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