[NNTP] Suggestions for NNTP extensions (CAPABILITIES)
Julien ÉLIE
julien at trigofacile.com
Sat Sep 20 06:46:25 PDT 2008
Hi,
In order to properly advertise a few (legacy) recognized commands in CAPABILITIES,
some more extensions are needed, as you all know. They should be standardized.
Here is what I suggest:
1/ Additions to LIST.
* LIST DISTRIBUTIONS (with a wildmat for the area?)
* LIST MODERATORS
* LIST MOTD
* LIST SUBSCRIPTIONS
* Define the meaning of some other status fields of LIST ACTIVE.
I do not know how to advertise it. Maybe we could have LIST ACTIVE.STATUS
where the return would be:
y Posting is permitted.
n Posting is not permitted.
=* Alias group.
because it might be different in implementations. Or should we have another
capability name (like EXTENDED-STATUS) which imposes the meaning of the defined
status(?)
Perhaps EXTENDED-STATUS is a better idea than LIST ACTIVE.STATUS because only
humans will be able to understand the result of LIST ACTIVE.STATUS.
* Say in the introduction that LIST EXTENSIONS is deprecated in favour of CAPABILITIES.
Available references:
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/nntp/drafts/draft-hernacki-nntplist-02.txt
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/nntp/rfcs/rfc2980.txt
2/ PAT capability.
* The legacy syntax is kept:
PAT header range|message-ID pattern [pattern ...]
* New metadata :body to specify that PAT will search in bodies.
It would be advertised as PAT BODY in CAPABILITIES. (Or by default in PAT?)
* Maybe another metadata :text to search in the whole article (headers+body)?
It would be advertised as PAT TEXT in CAPABILITIES. (Or by default in PAT?)
* Support for existing :bytes and :lines metadata, like what is currently
implemented in INN 2.5 (for XPAT):
XPAT :lines 112- *
221 Header or metadata information for :lines follows (from overview)
112 7
113 8
.
XPAT lines 112- *
221 Header information for lines follows (from articles)
112 Not a number!
113 1789
.
* I do not know how to deal with encoding problems... For instance,
if I search the word "trouvé", it can be encoded in lots of ways
in bodies, as well as in headers (QP...).
* What for a search in folded headers? May we assume they are in the same
format as in the overview database? Therefore, we cannot search for
tabulations...
* Hmm... Should PAT be more extensible? Allowing to find articles matching
several conditions? (header Path: contains "server" AND metadata :lines
is LARGER than 20...)
Available references:
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/nntp/drafts/draft-ballou-nntpsrch-03.txt
3/ Something to deal with large article numbers. What can be done?
An extension? But what kind of capability and use?
Available references:
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/ietf-nntp/2005-July/005720.html
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/ietf-nntp/2005-July/005802.html
[...]
4/ Something to deal with compressed feeds.
Maybe we could define BATCH there (the legacy XBATCH command) along
with another command(?)
5/ Something to deal with cancels. Maybe the CANCEL capability?
A basic CANCEL <message-ID> command.
6/ Something to deal with headers feeds. It should be great to have
a standard for that.
MODE HEADFEED is normally used. I thought MODE commands began to
be deprecated (MODE STREAM and MODE READER) but I do not see well
how we could have a headers feed without a special mode...
7/ I also see QUOTA there:
http://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/ietf-nntp/2007-February/005989.html
Is it useful to go on with it?
8/ INN also implements a wider syntax for wildmats (with "[" and "]" for
instance). Ranges like "-12" and "-" are also recognized in order to
be more symmetric with the already defined "12-".
Notwithstanding, I do not think it needs an extension for that...
If someone knows other references or thinks about other extensions,
please complete this mail.
Could someone *briefly* explain me the process to follow in order to
write a draft for these extensions?
I admit I am a bit lost when I try to find information on rfc-editor.org
when there is an available working group.
Thanks beforehand,
--
Julien ÉLIE
« Omnia uincit Amor et nos cedamus Amori. » (Virgile)
More information about the ietf-nntp
mailing list