[NNTP] Re: Nearly there

[Ken Murchison]

Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
>> I have a vague memory that we had a couple of changes we were considering
>> making at this stage, but can't remember exactly what they were. If anyone
>> else can, this would be a good time to carry out a sanity check in the
>> group.
> 
> Okay, trawling through the archives ...
> 
> (1) Keywords (which include capability names) are limited to 12 characters,
> but we already have a keyword ("IMPLEMENTATION") which is longer than that.
> The majority view was to remove the limit completely:
> 
>     A "keyword" MUST consist only of US-ASCII letters, digits, and the
>     characters dot (".") and dash ("-"), and MUST begin with a letter.
>     Keywords MUST be at least three characters.
> 
>       keyword = ALPHA 2*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "." / "-")

Agreed.


> (2) What should the limit be on article numbers? At present it is 2^32-1,
> but there were proposals:
> - to make it 2^31-1, because some existing implementations use signed 32
>   bit types to hold the article number and we should be documenting
>   existing practice;
> - to make it 2^64-1, either as a SHOULD or a MUST;
> - to have no limit, but warn that existing implementations have limits.

In the absence of any defined limit in RFC 977, I'd say we need to 
document minimum limit which gives us interoperability but leave it open 
ended for implementations that have gone higher.


-- 
Kenneth Murchison
Systems Programmer
Project Cyrus Developer/Maintainer
Carnegie Mellon University