[NNTP] Suggestions for NNTP extensions (CAPABILITIES)

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Russ,

> y, n, and m are already standardized.  The flags that INN adds are:
>
>     j   No posting allowed, incoming articles filed into junk
>     x   No posting allowed, remote postings rejected
>     =*  Group aliasing
>
> Thinking about this, I think we may want a combination of standardization
> and a change in INN's behavior here.

As for innd's problem, it is triggered off by the fact that:

    7.6.3.  LIST ACTIVE

       This keyword MUST be supported by servers advertising the READER
       capability.

LIST ACTIVE is typically a reader command.  Therefore, "j" and "x" do not
have meaning for it.  However, they do have one for peers.  When "n" is
used for instance, it means that articles from peers are accepted.
Thus, "n", "j" and "x" are more precise.

I think that only "n" should be used by nnrpd but innd should go on using
and advertising "j" and "x".
Maybe it is something we can specify in the document for other LIST methods.
We define "j" and "x" which have special meanings for peers.  And also
for "n".



> Well, you can require the pattern be in UTF-8 and do RFC 2047 decoding of
> the header before doing the matching, which would then work properly for
> all RFC-2822-compatible articles.  Doesn't help with articles with 8-bit
> headers that aren't in UTF-8, but the standards say you're not supposed to
> do that anyway.

Interesting idea, indeed.  Thanks!
I see that there are C (GPL) librairies to do the decoding so it is feasible.



> The body is way harder.  You'd need a full-blown MIME implementation in
> the server.

I do not know if there is really a need to search inside bodies.  But it
might still be useful to standardize.



> We'd need more information about how it's used.  Does it rely on being
> able to distinguish between CHECK for a header and CHECK for a full
> article?  What does a Diablo implementation with a header feed do if it
> gets a traditional CHECK for an article for which it has only the header?
> It may be that it's not that complicated.

I do not know.  I shall see when trying to deal with that.
Let's focus on LIST and PAT before.



> You can also grab the XML source of the current USEPRO draft as another
> example at:
>
> http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/usefor/drafts/draft-ietf-usefor-usepro-12.xml

Thanks.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

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