[NNTP] [2501] Reader commands in transit servers and vice-versa

[Ken Murchison]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Richard Clayton <richard at highwayman.com> writes:
> 
>>Clive D.W. Feather <clive at demon.net> writes
> 
> 
>>>   The specific description of each command will describe it as a
>>>   "transit command", a "reader command", or a "general command". An
>>>   NNTP server may be "transit-only", "reader-only", or "general-use".
> 
> 
>>>   * A general-use server MUST fully implement all the commands in this
>>>     specification.
> 
> 
>>>   * A reader-only server MUST fully implement all reader commands,
>>>     but does not need to implement transit commands.
> 
> 
>>Calling it "reader only" when you'd expect POST to work (so that end-
>>users with normal sorts of existing software can expect to interoperate
>>with it usefully) is rather obscure :(
> 
> 
>>Surely you can't mean for people to have lots of "general-use" systems
>>since who would wish to implement all of the gubbins around IHAVE (and
>>other transit type chatter) just so they can provide POST
> 
> 
>>ie: the categories need to be something like "transit", "customer" and
>>"general-use", with appropriate command categorisation following from
>>that!
> 
> 
> Could you rephrase that?  I honestly have no idea what you just said or
> what you're driving at.  If someone didn't want to implement IHAVE, they'd
> provide a reader-only server, not a general-use server.

I think Richard is arguing that POST is a transit command, not a reader 
command, because its a "push" of data rather than a "pull" of data and 
therefore the term "reader-only" excludes POST.  If my understanding of 
his statements are correct, I disagree with this assessment.  The POST 
command is used by a "reading agent" to inject a news article and IHAVE 
is used by a "transit server" to propogate articles.

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
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