[NNTP] LISTGROUP

Peter Robinson pmrobinson at gmx.net
Wed Apr 20 15:19:33 PDT 2005


Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> wrote:

> As promised, here's my proposed text for LISTGROUP that makes the command
> a mandatory part of READER and adds a range argument.

This (the range argument) would change LISTGROUP from a mere curiosity
into something clients might actually want to use.  That makes it a good
thing IMO.  The implementational burden this puts on servers is surely
trivial compared with CAPABILITIES, so that's not an issue for me, but I
think we should note somewhere that clients can't expect the range
parameter to work in old servers.

[...]

> If this proposal goes into the draft, it
> would mean that in order to claim NNTPv2 compliance, implementing
> LISTGROUP with a range argument would be mandatory.

Is the possibility of LISTGROUP [RANGE] as a(n optional) CAPABILITY
closed then?  (That's fine with me, I have no strong opinion on the
subject.)

>    Syntax
>       LISTGROUP [group [range]]

Excellent.

>    Responses
>       211 number low high group   Article numbers follow (multiline)
>       411                         No such newsgroup
>       412                         No newsgroup selected [1]
>    Parameters
>       group  = name of newsgroup
>       range  = number(s) of articles
>       number = estimated number of articles in the group

So 'number' is an estimate for the whole group, not just for articles in
the range.  That's fine, but I think it needs to be stated explicitly in
the text, since it's probably not what you'd expect unless you're used
to the old LISTGROUP.

> 6.1.2.2  Description
>
>    The LISTGROUP command is used to get a listing of some or all the
>    article numbers in a particular newsgroup.  As a side effect, it also
>    selects the group in the same way as the GROUP command (see Section
>    6.1.1).

I think we need to be clearer about what happens to the current article
pointer.  My reading of it is that by deferring to GROUP you're saying
that it's always the first article in the group that's selected, even if
it's not in the (non-empty) range, or if there are no articles in the
range.  I think this needs to be stated explicitly.

I also think we should say that the group is selected even if there are
no articles in the range.

[...]

>    If no range is specified, the range 1- is assumed.  If the name of the
>    newsgroup is not specified, the range may not be specified.
                                           ^^^^^^^
                                           MUST NOT?
Regards,

Peter



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list