[NNTP] Additions to LIST commands

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho antti-juhani at kaijanaho.fi
Tue Nov 17 21:51:28 PST 2009


On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 09:42:44PM +0100, Julien ÉLIE wrote:
> Hu Antti-Juhani,
> 
> >   "j"  Articles are filed under the "junk" newsgroup.
> >
> >Is there any reason to constrain the implementation so much?
> 
> I just documented what INN has always done.
> Diablo and C News, to cite only them, do not use "j".

It is fine from the point of view of client authors to document what the
existing big server implementors do.  However, the question is, whether you
really want to constrain *new* server implementors in this particular way.

> >It seems to me
> >that "j" could easily be implemented as "accept posts but do not file them",
> >without the use of, or existence of, a "junk" newsgroup.   Would that break
> >existing clients, or common usage?
> 
> So your suggestion is to decorrelate "j" with the existence of anything
> else?

I would prefer to allow a server to use "j" to indicate "I will accept messages
to this newsgroup but I will not file them anywhere".  That many servers file
them to "junk" should be documented for the benefit of client authors and
users (and perhaps made a SHOULD, if clients expect it), but I don't think it
should be an implementation requirement for servers.

-- 
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland
http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/


More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list