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From: phil@east.Berkeley.EDU (Phil Lapsley)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: LIST command and filenames
Message-ID: <14014@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 20 May 89 20:11:18 GMT
References: <157@lib.tmc.edu> <1720@ucsd.EDU> <14701@paris.ics.uci.edu> <161@lib.tmc.edu> <15151@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: phil@east.Berkeley.EDU (Phil Lapsley)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 30

The reason I object to the use of filenames in the LIST command is that
it ties what was a standard protocol (NNTP) to a particular implementation
of netnews.

For example, let's say my client wants to look at the sys file.  The
client issues a "LIST sys" command, and the server dumps out the named
/usr/lib/news file ("sys").  Well, that's neat, until I try to use my
client with some other implementation of netnews that doesn't have a
sys file, or has one but doesn't call it "sys".  Worse, I might be
running a version of netnews whose sys file contents/format is different
than 2.11.  Oops.

My point is that for anything you want to get via the NNTP server, you
need two documented things:

     1. A name, which does not necessarily have to be the same as the
	name of the file that contains the info.

     2. A description of the output (contents), which does not necessarily
	have to be the same (format-wise) as the contents of the file
	containing the info.

I stress that these need to be documented.  If they're not, you're
up a creek when you want to go to different implementations of netnews.

(Private flame: this is why I think the so-called "finger protocol"
is bogus.  You get back a bunch of strings that cannot be parsed
by a machine because their is no standard for their format).

Phil Lapsley		...!ucbvax!phil		phil@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU