Re: News and nntp URI schemes

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:59:48 -0000, Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk>  
wrote:


> So I have two alternative texts:
>
> 2.3  The newsURI contains an <all-groups>
>
>      If the newsURI is of one of the following forms:
>         <URI:news:*>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/*>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com>
>      it refers to "all available news groups".  The resource retrieved by
>      this URI is some means to gain access to all the newsgroups that are
>      available from the given <authority> (usually by invoking a suitable
> news
>      reading agent).
>
> [Issue: Do we really want all those forms? Only the first was in [RFC
> 1738], but many agents currently accept the others. Moreover, some
> agents are known to barf on anything with '*' in it. Maybe the '*' part
> of the notation should be dispensed with. I therefore offer two
> alternative formulations.]
>
> [1st alternative]
>
>         all-groups  = news-server [ "/" ] / <empty>
>
>      The possibility for <all-groups> to consist of a "*", which was
>      present in [RFC 1738] is now obsoleted, and its continued use is
>      deprecated. It was, in any case, only patchily implemented.
>
> [That allows the following forms:
>         <URI:news:>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com>
> of which the first may or may not already work on current
> implementations (but that is true of the others also).]
>
> [2nd alternative]
>
>         newsURI     = "news:" ( article / group )
>         article     = [ news-server "/" ] message-id
>         group       = [ news-server "/" ] wildmat
>
> [where <wildmat> is defined in draft-ietf-nntpext-base-*.txt and would
> allow the following forms:
>         <URI:news:*>
>         <URI:news:comp.*>
>         <URI:news:*.test>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/*>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/comp.*>
>         <URI:news://news.example.com/*.test>
>
> this is an enhancement of draft-gilman-news-url-02.txt and preserves the
> "*". It would be readily implemented, but it is quite certain that
> nowhere is it implemented currently. It would also be possible to
> preserve the <empty> from alternative 1 as well.]
>
> Personally, I think <wildmat>s is a step too far, and I would recommend
> alternative 1. But we need to discuss this.
>
> I have attached my complete text, as it now stands.

There has been much discussion on the NNTP WG list about this in recent  
days, mainly between myself and Russ Allbery. He has suggested various  
small textual changes, which I have adopted, but more importantly he likes  
going for the 2nd alternative (i.e. wildmats). It seems that Lynx, at  
least, already supports something pretty close to that, and it should also  
make Al Gilman happy. It would be useful, however, to hear of other  
systems that will currently handle all, or most, of the examples listed  
for the 2nd alternative.

In the meantime, I intend to rewrite the text incorporating those  
wildmats, and I shall post it here for your consideration.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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Received on Thursday, 10 March 2005 12:13:31 UTC