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

[Ken Murchison]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:
> 
>>Andrew - Supernews wrote:
> 
> 
>>>You can make a good argument that even in that list, HEAD, STAT and
>>>LIST ACTIVE don't belong. In fact a majority of transit-only
>>>implementations don't implement at least one of those.
> 
> 
>>This list is based on the fact that they are all listed as "general"
>>commands in the current pre4 draft.  I make no claims as to their
>>correctness, but I recall discussion that they are used by some feeding
>>clients/servers.
> 
> 
> HEAD and STAT are pretty much only for debugging purposes; they don't
> actually have a protocol purpose between transit servers.

So, I guess in my current line of thinking, these would be "reader" 
commands (only *guaranteed* to be implemented when READER is 
advertised), and if some sites decide to implement them for transit 
servers, they would be unadvertised.

We *could* add some protocol cruft to allow:

[C] CAPABILITIES
[S] VERSION 2
[S] IHAVE
[S] STAT MSGID
[S] HEAD MSGID
[S] LIST ACTIVE
[S] .


OR


[C] CAPABILITIES
[S] VERSION 2
[S] TRANSIT DEBUG
[S] .

But that seems like too much effort just to advertise a debugging config.


> LIST ACTIVE is
> used sometimes to build feed patterns, but Andrew's correct that some
> transit servers have no concept of it.

Hopefully this will be superceded by a "real" feed control extension.

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