[NNTP] Capabilities in responses

[Kai Henningsen]

mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)  wrote on 09.11.04 in <Pine.LNX.4.62.0411090832360.15653 at shiva1.cac.washington.edu>:

> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> >>> Our existing response code model doesn't have anywhere to insert
> >>> asynchronous messages from the server. It can't go in the free text area
> >>> for the reasons given above, so it needs to go somewhere else.
> >> What is so special about NNTP that it can not do exactly what IMAP and
> >> SMTP did?
> > What exactly was done, and what was the installed base?
>
> What is the installed base of SMTP, POP3, and IMAP?
>
> SMTP added extended response codes.  SMTP also requires that an ESMTP
> capable server include "ESMTP" somewhere in the greeting.

SMTP requires no such thing.

I was there when it was discussed and rejected; nevertheless I had a look  
at RFC 2821 to make sure it's not in there.

> POP3 added the APOP authentication token in the greeting.

One of the ugliest mechanisms I ever saw ...

> IMAP added status response codes, among which are capabilities in the
> greetings.

I'll not talk about that incredibly overcomplicated protocol.

> All of these protocols either have incredibly stupid designers who can not
> see the problems that are the NNTP designers see -- or just maybe the
> problems are not substantial enough to be of concern.

Or maybe some of them *did* see it.

> of doing what someone in the news community thought was "cleaner".  This
> is an ongoing problem; the news community has a dismal history of
> insisting upon reinventing wheels that are already long-invented and
> well-understood.

That is well-balanced by a consistent trend of the mail community to  
refuse to even consider where circumstances for news are plainly  
different, and the mail solution has serious problems for news.

MfG Kai