[NNTP] LIST EXTENSIONS (again)

[Ken Murchison]

Jeffrey M. Vinocur wrote:
> On Nov 9, 2004, at 6:57 AM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> 
>> Russ says:
>>
>>>
>>> This is equivalent to having NNTPv2, NNTPv3, etc. extension labels that
>>> can all be advertised together if the revisions are compatible 
>>> somehow.  I
>>> think this is the best approach to take.
>>
>>
>> Right. Except that it would be "_NNTP_ 2 3".
> 
> 
> Is everyone in agreement that we need the special underscores here?  It 
> strikes me as a strange and unnecessary distinction, or perhaps I just 
> haven't thought about it hard enough.

I'm not particularly fond of the '_'.  I'm also not fond of listing the 
version number(s) as argument(s) to the token.  I prefer what Russ used 
above: individual tokens for each revision.  I don't really care what 
the tokens are; call them "RUSS", "JEFF", "KEN" as far as I'm concerned. 
  They are just arbitrary tokens whose meaning is specified in the 
relevant documents (just like "STREAMING").

That being said, the driving force should be what is easier for clients 
to parse/use.  Its doesn't *really* matter how [un]attractive the 
mechanism looks because the protcol really isn't for human consumption 
anyways (other than us hackers).


> On a related note, I don't think we need to cram everything under 
> discussion this week into a single line of LIST EXTENSIONS; if we want 
> to indicate specification revision and command sets available, can't we 
> just make them two separate lines?

Agreed.

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