[NNTP] LIST COUNTS and LIST EXTENSIONS

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi,

Following a (private) discussion with Urs, we wonder whether
we should document LIST COUNTS.
It behaves like LIST ACTIVE except that it also returns the
number of articles in every newsgroup.
It is implemented in Highwinds products (e.g. Cyclone, Tornado,
Typhoon, Twister -- when they support readers).

LIST ACTIVE xs4all.*test
215 NewsGroups Follow
xs4all.be.test 0000000274 0000000275 y
xs4all.test 0000003629 0000003623 y
.
LIST COUNTS xs4all.*test
215 NewsGroups Follow
xs4all.be.test 0000000274 0000000275 0000000000 y
xs4all.test 0000003629 0000003623 0000000007 y
.
GROUP xs4all.test
211 7 3623 3629 xs4all.test

It can be useful for news readers which indicate the number of
articles in a newsgroup (otherwise, they have to send both LIST ACTIVE
and GROUP for every subscribed newsgroup at startup).

But not always easy to implement a *fast* answer to that
command in news servers.


Should we officially document it as a new variant of LIST?


As for LIST EXTENSIONS, it was implemented by several news
servers (INN, Diablo, Collabra, etc.) so it may be worthwhile
adding a sentence in the introduction of the draft for new
LIST commands to say it is now deprecated in favour of CAPABILITIES.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

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