[NNTP] Misc changes

[Peter Robinson]

Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> wrote:

> Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:

[snips]

> > (2) Make POST a separate capability. I think this was agreed.
> 
> Yes.

Excellent.

> The other item that was raised was adding a capability for NEWNEWS.  I
> agree with the feeling that servers should really provide it, but given
> the number that choose not to, maybe we shouldn't be dictating policy in
> the standard to quite that degree.

My opinion is that NEWNEWS should be given its own CAPABILITY.

Despite RFC977, some servers don't implement NEWNEWS because it's seen
as too expensive (or for some other reason).  That's not going to change
just because this new spec says it should.  Surely a large part of the
purpose of this group is to document current behaviour, including
(especially?) where it diverges from RFC977.

Now we've gone to all the trouble of adding a beautiful new CAPABILITIES
mechanism, it seems to me to be madness to preserve the current
situation where a client author can diligently read the specs, design
and test his algorithm, ship it, and only then discover that it doesn't
work with N% of servers despite being completely correct wrt the specs.

Regards,

Peter