Re: ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers

[Chris Caputo <[e-mail]>]

On Sat, 28 Dec 1996, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> I know you can't get the actual arrival time back from the server. However,
> the *concept* is important; if NEWNEWS for some date-time returns article B
> but not article A in the same newsgroup, then B must have a higher number
> than A. I suppose that's the point I'm trying to make.

RFC977 and the current draft both say that NEWNEWS returns "A list of
message-ids of articles posted or received to the specified news group..."
My point is that we shouldn't instruct the server authors how to track
when articles are posted or received.  The definition of NEWNEWS should be
sufficient enough to let an author know they need to track messages with
some unspecified method.  "posted or received" leaves the server author
with the job of deciding to use the Date: field in posts, or an arrival
timestamp, or some other feasible mechanism. 

Chris Caputo
President, Altopia Corporation