Always 224 with XOVER?

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi Russ,

>> What kind of information would you want?  Differences between
>> implemented RFC 2980-documented commands, RFC 2980 commands and new RFC
>> 3977 commands?  Another thing?
>
> Yeah, basically a list of the NNTP commands and status codes with text
> from the relevant standards for comparison and notes on what
> implementations actually do.  It was a rather ambitious goal.  :)

Instead of writing such a page (which can be very large and boring with
texts available elsewhere), wouldn't it better to write a page with *only*
examples?  I reckon that being practical is far better than RFC, especially
for telling how to behave in (all?) cases, and also differences.
Very few comments.


The page will also be very large :)
But maybe it could be split:  one page by NNTP command?
For each command, we would have a link to the general AUTHINFO page and
explanations if something is different here (not 480/483/502).  Then
several cases which show answer codes and subtleties.

Example for XOVER:


* Most news servers return 224 even though no articles matches:

GROUP existing.newsgroup
211 11 10 20 existing.newsgroup
XOVER 1-8
224 No articles in 1-8
.

Even though it contradicts RFC 2980 which defines XOVER (423 should be
returned in such cases), implementations usually return 224 so it is
best to keep returning 224.
Note that OVER must return 423 in such cases.



Examples for HDR/XHDR:

* When the current article has 3 lines but "Lines: 1234" in its headers:

HDR lines
225 Header information for lines follows (from articles)
105 1874
.
HDR :lines
225 Header or metadata information for :lines follows (from overview)
105 3
.


* When no article contains the header "Unknown":

GROUP existing.newsgroup
211 11 10 20 existing.newsgroup
XHDR unknown 10-15
221 Header information for unknown follows (from articles)
.
HDR unknown 10-15
225 Header information for unknown follows (from articles)
10
11
12
13
14
15
.


etc.

-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Alea iacta est, comme je dis toujours. » (César)