Subject: Re: [NNTP] Suggestions for NNTP extensions (CAPABILITIES)

From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:06:01 -0700

Julien ÉLIE <[email-masked]> writes:

> 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".

That's probably not a bad idea, and would help with things like actsync
provided that they're pointed to innd rather than nnrpd.

> 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".

It seems like a reasonable idea to me.  They've been in use for many years
with those meanings, and I don't at first glance see a reason not to
document what they mean.  The only tricky part is that "j" refers to a
junk group, which is an implementation detail of INN that isn't generally
standardized news server behavior.

>> 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.

It's something that people have asked for frequently over the years, but
it's a much harder problem than it looks like at first glance.  Even if
you define a good query language, there's still the problem of building
indices on the server so that searches can finish in reasonable lengths of
time.  And the free search engines have not had a great track record
(projects keep appearing and disappearing again, each with entirely
different index formats and APIs).

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>