[NNTP] Extension snapshots 2

Russ Allbery rra at stanford.edu
Thu Jan 6 15:25:51 PST 2005


Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:
> Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

>> What I've put in snapshot 6 is:

>>    A client MAY use the CAPABILITIES command to determine whether it
>>    needs to issue a MODE READER command and SHOULD NOT do so if it is
>>    unnecessary.  If the server does not support CAPABILITIES (and
>>    therefore does not conform to this specification), the client MAY use
>>    the following heuristic:

>>    o  if the client wishes to use the IHAVE command, it SHOULD NOT use
>>       the MODE READER command or any command that is not marked as
>>       mandatory in this specification;

I'm not sure we need the bit after the "or"; I don't think that really
provides anything useful at this point.  It's not like the world ends if
they try it and the command fails, since we're already into guesswork
territory given that the server doesn't support CAPABILITIES.

>>    o  otherwise the client SHOULD use the MODE READER command
>>       immediately after the initial connection, and then SHOULD NOT use
>>       the IHAVE command.

Likewise here, I would drop everything after the comma.

>> and, elsewhere:

>>    The client MUST NOT send this command after any other command except
>>    CAPABILITIES (in particular, it MUST NOT send this command twice in
>>    a session); if it does so, the server MAY violate this specification
>>    even if it returns a successful response (for example, the server
>>    MAY forget the currently selected newsgroup or change its privacy or
>>    authentication status).

>> How's that?

I would replace this whole paragraph with my paragraph from before:

    If a client intends to use the MODE READER command, it SHOULD issue it
    before issuing any commands other than CAPABILITIES and MUST issue it
    before any security or privacy commands are issued.

I don't think we need to allow for the server doing strange things in
response to a second MODE READER command.

> Don't we also want text somewhere that states that "the MODE-READER
> capability MUST NOT be advertised after any security or privacy commands
> have completed successfully"?

Yes, I think so.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list