Subject: [NNTP] News and nntp URI schemes

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:56:30 GMT

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hoffman-news-nntp-uri-03.txt has
recently appeared, but it does not yet reflect all the discussions that
have taken place on the uri.w3.org list.

What follows is a suggested text for the central portion of that draft,
taking those discussions into account, and which I have just posted to
uri.w3.org. I am also posting it to the nntp and Usefor lists for
information. If you want to comment, please do so to the URI list, to
which Reply-To has been set.

2.  The News URL Scheme

   The news URL scheme is used to refer to either news groups
   or individual Netnews articles, as defined in RFC 1036.

   The news URL takes the form:

      newsURL     = "news:" ( article / group / all-groups )
      article     = [ news-server "/" ] message-id
      group       = [ news-server "/" ] newsgroup-name
      all-groups  = news-server [ "/" [ "*" ] ] / "*"
      news-server = "//" server

   <server> is defined in [2396bis], and provides for a <host>, a <port>
   (defaulting to 119 in this scheme) and possibly a <userinfo>.

   If no <news-server> is specified, the resources are to be retrieved
   from whatever server has been configured for local use.

2.1  The newsURL contains an <article>

   A <message-id> corresponds to the <msg-id> of RFC 2822 and to the
   Message-ID of section 2.1.5 of RFC 1036, but without the enclosing
   "<" and ">".

   The resource retrieved by this URL is the Netnews article with the
   given <message-id>.  In a properly working Netnews system, the same
   article will be obtained whatever server is accessed for the purpose
   (assuming the server in question carried that article in the first
   place and that it has not expired).

   <id-left> and <id-right> are defined in Section 3.6.4 of RFC 2822
   [RFC2822]. They MUST be in a canonical form in which no
   <quoted-string> or <quoted-pair> is used in a context where the same
   semantic meaning could have been rendered without such quoting;
   moreover, no whitespace or ">" may be included, whether %-encoded or
   not and/or quoted or not.

   For example, neither

      news:"abcd"@example.com

   nor

      news:"ab\cd"@example.com

   is in canonical form, because the form

      news:[email-masked]

   is available.

2.2  The newsURL contains a <group>

   The <newsgroup-name> is a period-delimited hierarchical name, such as
   "comp.lang.perl.modules".

   The resource retrieved by this URL is some means to gain access to
   the articles in the given <newsgroup-name> that are available on the
   given <server> (usually by invoking a suitable news reading agent
   initialized to access that group).

2.2  The newsURL contains an <all-groups>

   If the newsURL is of one of the following forms:
      <URL:news:*>
      <URL:news://news.example.com/*>
      <URL:news://news.example.com/>
      <URL:news://news.example.com>
   it refers to "all available news groups".  The resource retrieved by
   this URL is some means to gain access to all the newsgroups that are
   available on the given <server> (usually by invoking a suitable news
   reading agent).

[Issue: Do we really want all those forms? Only the first was in RFC 1738.
Some agents are known to barf on anything with '*' in it; there exist
agents which recognize the last two forms. Maybe the '*' part of the
notation should be dispensed with.]

3.  The nntp URL scheme

   The nntp URL scheme is used to refer to individual Netnews articles,
   as defined in RFC 1036.

   The nntp URL takes the form:

      nntpURL     = "nntp"  ":" news-server "/" newsgroup-name "/" range
      news-server =  "//" server
      range       = article-number ["-" [article-number]]
      article-number = 1*DIGIT

   Observe, in contradistinction to the news scheme, that the
   <news-server> is not optional here, because the mapping from
   <article-numbers> to actual articles is established independently by
   each server.

3.1  The range is a single <article-number>

   The resource retrieved by this URL is the Netnews article numbered
   by the given <article-number> in the given <newsgroup-name> on the
   given <server>.

3.2  The range encompasses more than a single <article-number>

   The resource retrieved by this URL is some means to gain access to
   the articles numbered within the given <range> of <article-
   number>s in the given <newsgroup-name> on the given <server>
   (usually by invoking a suitable news reading agent initialized to
   access that range). A <range> of the form "nnnn-" provides access to
   all articles numbered "nnnn" and above.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

---

From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 09:48:16 +0000

Charles Lindsey said:
> If you want to comment, please do so to the URI list, to

Oh no it hasn't. This reply is being sent to the NNTP list, as the only
place I can locate that this message has appeared. The significant headers
in your message (ignoring Received: and stuff clearly added by Eyrie) are:

====
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Newsgroups: local.usefor,local.nntp
Path: clerew!chl
From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.2 (NOV)
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:56:30 GMT
Subject: [NNTP] News and nntp URI schemes
X-BeenThere: [email-masked]
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====

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <[email-masked]>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <[email-masked]>  | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
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