question size of explanatory responses

[Russ Allbery]

Todd Olson <tco2 at cornell.edu> writes:

> So if one returns a "not authorized" code and then a bunch of lines of
> text directing people to a local support center, one would be surprised
> if a news client got upset over 10? 20? 50? lines.

Unfortunately, you can't do that, because only a very limited set of NNTP
commands allow for multiline responses from the server.  NNTP isn't like
SMTP; you can't send multiline responses in response to anything, only in
response to those commands specifically defined to return multiline
responses.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>