[NNTP] Future-proofing for including capabilities in responses

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Tue Mar 29 00:07:17 PST 2005


Ken Murchison said:
> Then pick something that isn't likely to appear in the wild, e.g.:
> 
> [:  :]  or [!  !] or <?  ?>
> 
> Using non-ASCII seems overkill.

Seeing as non-ASCII is very unlikely to appear in the wild, and
illegal-UTF-8 even less likely, why isn't that better?

We're talking about tokens that the client is going to examine; it's not
that important that they be readable.

> I think at this point we've reached consensus that this would only be 
> necessary if we want to put the capabilities in the initial greeting (we 
> can use a multiline responses elsewhere), so this discussion is probably 
> moot.

Indeed.

> But I really don't see what the big deal is with putting the 
> capabilities in the free text.  IMAP added it and nobody squealed.

Was it free text in previous versions of the protocol? I can't be bothered
to go and check, but it's not my memory of the discussion last time.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646
Thus plc            |                            |



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list