[NNTP] Compressed LIST answers

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi,

Another idea suggested by Urs is to have LIST variants which
send compressed answers.
Especially for ACTIVE and NEWSGROUPS.

The data should be compressed and probably also encoded.


Should we try to standardize that?

LIST ZACTIVE, LIST ZNEWSGROUPS?
or a new capability ZLIST (therefore ZLIST ACTIVE, ZLIST NEWSGROUPS
and any other keywords -- which would have exactly the same meaning
as its LIST variant)?

Should we force a format?  (lzma-compressed and base64-encoded?)
Or should we negotiate it?  (saying that lzma+base64, at least, MUST
be implemented)

For instance:
ZLIST LZMA BASE64 ACTIVE
ZLIST NONE NONE ACTIVE         -> which would be like LIST ACTIVE
ZLIST LZMA NONE ACTIVE         -> for binary-clean implementations
ZLIST BZIP2 YENC ACTIVE comp.*

The problem is that IANA does not register, as far as I can see,
compression names or encoding names like these.
I was imagining something like SASL mechanisms could be useful
to have here.
Because if we force lzma+base64, what if new algorithms more
efficient arrive?  There is lzma2 for instance.  And base64 is
not the best encoding...


Any comments on that?

The same mechanism could also be applied to OVER, HDR, NEWNEWS, etc.
Maybe ARTICLE...  and for clients, IHAVE, TAKETHIS if we want.

But if that is the case, maybe we will need a generic command
for compressed commands...  Because it will be a lot if we have
ZOVER, ZHDR, ZNEWNEWS, ZTAKETHIS, etc.

Any idea?
Or any other suggestion to handle LIST compression and possibly
all NNTP commands?

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Ce qui m'intéresse chez une femme, c'est ce que
  je n'ose pas lui demander. » (Wolinski)