[NNTP] Extension docs snapshots

[Clive D.W. Feather]

Ken Murchison said:
>>authinfo, section 3.1, last para,
>>   s/and CRLF as the/and CRLF, both exclusive, as the/
> 
> Is "both exclusive" intended to pair up USER and PASS with username and 
> password respectively?

No.

<Quietly sobs to self>

Consider the following command, using . to represent space:

    USER..fred.flintstone.

Is the username:

    .fred.flintstone.
    ..fred.flintstone.
    .fred.flintstone.[CRLF]
or
    ..fred.flintstone.[CRLF]
?

The intent of my wording is to say that the space after USER/PASS is not
part of the password, and nor is the CRLF.

Okay, try this:

    To solve this ambiguity,
    such implementations typically treat everything after the first
    white space character following "USER"/"PASS", up to but excluding
    the CRLF, as the username/password.

>> streaming, section 2.3.1, why is MODE STREAM "MUST NOT be pipelined"?

> Don't know.  Someone more familiar with streaming (Andrew?) needs to 
> chime in here.  I don't recall when this came into the document.  It 
> seems to me that any argument that can be made for MODE READER can be 
> made for MODE STREAM and vice versa.

The argument for MODE READER is that it invokes an entire new application.
But, as I understand it, MODE STREAM merely confirms that the other two
commands in the extension are implemented.

>> streaming, section 2.3.2, para 1: make it clear that a 501 is allowed if an
>> argument is given, and that the server state must not be affected by this
>> command. So something like:
>>    ... to the MODE STREAM command (or 501 if an argument is given).
> Is explicitly mentioning 501 really necessary?  If so, why don't we 
> mention it for NEXT?

NEXT says "If ... then response ... If ... then response ..." etc. In
general, I don't use unconditional "This command MUST return response ###"
because it implies that even generic response codes can't be returned.
While the bit on generic codes says that they MUST always be expected, I'd
rather not have that ambiguity sitting around.

If you look at QUIT, I say:

    The server MUST NOT generate any response code to the QUIT command
    other than 205 or, if any arguments are provided, 501. 

to indicate that other generic responses are forbidden. Could you bring
yourself to keep to that formulation?

>> * I've seen *NO* feedback on 25-pre3, which rewrites the MODE READER issue
>> in terms of "transit" and "reader" connections.
[...]
> I'm waiting for all of the dust to settle on the above before I make any 
> changes.

Sure. As I said, I've had *NO* feedback yet, which slightly bothers me.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
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