Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.toronto.edu!ietf-nntp-distribution-owner
Date: Wed, 1 May 1991 11:07:11 -0400
From: brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor)
Message-ID: <9105011507.AA25900@ucsd.edu>
Original-To: ietf-nntp@turbo.bio.net
Subject: new idea
Newsgroups: list.ietf-nntp
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I suggest that rather than all the option negotiation that I'd originally
proposed for the news transfer stuff in the revised NNTP spec, that instead
we have some new commands that a client can send a server.

+ a command to find out how big a batch the server can accomodate at
any particular time
	< BSIZE
	> 2xx 65535 is my maximum batchsize

+ a command to ship a bunch of article IDs and let the server select only
those that it wants to receive
	< IBATCH
	> 3xx ship me a bunch of message ids
	< ---
	< ---   (a list of article IDs the client can offer to the server
	< ---
	< .
	> 3yy of those, I want the following
	> ---
	> ---
	> .

+ a command to actually ship the batch
	< BATCH
	> 3xx ship 'em
	< (a bunch of articles in RFC1036 batches)
	< .
	> 2xx got that ok, will post them eventually

Some options would remain, such as selecting image mode for the textual
transfers, and compression.

I think this simplifies things quite a bit, eh?
	- Brian