reggers@ria.ccs.uwo.ca (Reg Quinton) (03/09/91)
I've run into a problem with the protocol extensions to NNTP by ANU/NEWS on vax/vms and by the tmc.edu group on Unix. Both have solved a similar problem different (and incompatible) ways. Anyways here's the problem. Both want to add an extension that gives access to the newsgroup titles (not the article titles, the newsgroup titles). On Unix systems this is usually filed as /usr/lib/news/newsgroups, on ANU/NEWS it's squirrled away in one of Geoff's data bases. 1. ANU Solution: ANU/NEWS implements, and expects NNTP servers to implement, the LIST command as defined in RFC977. But that specification only gives you the list of active newsgroups. The ANU group has therefore implemented an extension command "XGTITLE". The only place I see this being used is in the command "XGTITLE *" which spits back all titles. 2. tmc.edu Solution: Stan Barber's code instead extends the semantics of the "LIST" command to include these qualifiers: LIST LIST ACTIVE LIST NEWSGROUPS LIST DISTRIBUTIONS ------ Would it be possible to have these two groups together on this one issue? I think the preferred solution that is the second (but then want to run anu/news in client only mode to my Unix server ;-).