[NNTP] Misc changes

[Ade Lovett]

Charles Lindsey wrote:
>In <0c81f6cdd3c0fa68bfeb285156dc804b at litech.org> "Jeffrey M. Vinocur" <jeff at litech.org> writes:
>>>Charles Lindsey <chl at clerew.man.ac.uk> writes:
>>>>I don't like the idea of making NEWNEWS optional.
>  
>>Can you say why this is, concretely?
> 
> 
> Because I use it, and get annoyed by servers that don't provide it. So I
> would still like to be able to accuse such servers of non-compliance :-(

As one of the originators of a NEWNEWS-that-didn't-suck, I'd like
nothing better too.  However there are way more interesting battles to
fight.  Too many people who should know better, on both the server- and
client- side of the equation, don't give a rats arse about compliance.

Indeed, having it as an optional capability looks "better", since if you
do implement NEWNEWS, you get the bragging rights of specifically adding
it in to the capabilities list which will be somewhat more visible to
the old school that use it, who will also tend to be the ones that run
telnet sessions to nn{t,r}p hosts and type 'list capabilities' by hand,
rather than have some whizzbang GUI process it for them.

I also believe that it should be a capability in its own right (ie:
'NEWNEWS' instead of 'READER NEWNEWS') -- there's no intrinsic reason
why the list of message IDs generated would be used for only reader
purposes -- ditto for NEWGROUPS, whilst the primary reason is
undoubtedly for client newsreaders, it's not solely a reader command,
and thus should not be compartmentalized as such.

>>I would be fine with the document making an advisory statement to 
>>implementors that encourages implementation of NEWNEWS (and explains 
>>that it became optional only because, in the past, it was woefully 
>>inefficient).
> 
> Yes, I could go along with that.

Honestly, I don't see the need.  The vast majority of systems are going
to continue to not care about NEWNEWS (which is fine).  Having it
mentioned in the standard capability text and then the formal
description is plenty, imo.

There's no other places where the efficiency, or lack thereof, of
commands, are mentioned.  NEWNEWS does not need to be special in this
regard.  With the right conditions, it's pretty trivial to nadger a
certain piece of well-known commercial Usenet server software with
nothing more than GROUP, LAST, and NEXT...

-aDe