[NNTP] LISTGROUP

[Charles Lindsey]

In <Pine.WNT.4.63.0504181709160.3216 at Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU> Mark Crispin <MRC at cac.washington.edu> writes:

Pre-NNTPv2 clients will not be aware of the CAPABILITY command; therefore
they will not be issuing it. They will continue to issue the commands they
have always issued, and will continue to expect the responses they have
always received. By and large, the NNTPv2 draft delivers on that implied
promise, modulo a few tight corners and some places where existing
practice varies.

>>> Can we get rid of that "estimated" from "estimated number of articles in
>>> the group"?  As far as I am concerned, an estimated value is worse than
>>> useless, and an NNTPv2 compliant server should be required to give an
>>> exact value.
>> An exact value at the time that the command is issued that may have
>> changed a second later doesn't strike me as much more useful than an
>> estimated value.

The estimate may change due to articles within the range which have been
cancelled or which have expired. The draft explicitly permits servers
simply to return the difference between the high and low water marks (as
"reported"), if they consider it too onerous to maintain a
second-by-second running total. Nobody cares if the number of articles
eventually returned is less than predicted - in practice the number is not
likely to be hugely less, unless some grand Hipcrime spew has recently
been cancelled.

BTW, I am happy to have a range parameter added to LISTGROUPS if that is
the consensus. Pre-NNTPv2 clients are unlikely to run into it
accidentally, and Post-NNTPv2 clients that try to use it on old servers
without checking CAPABILITIES first will get a dusty response.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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