Re: ietf-nntp Issue: empty groups

[USENET news manager <[e-mail]>]

Jack De Winter wrote:
>[About GROUP response for empty groups, and in particular the common 
>response with first=last=count=0 rather than valid "current" values]
>>The low article number provides no useful information for the client when
>>the count is zero.
>
>Possibly in your case.  I might decide (in a polling situation) that I
>want to add a check to make sure that my polling time is not too large
>and that I am not missing articles.  With the 0 0 0 approach, this would
>be impossible.  I would have no simple way of deducing if I have missed
>any articles.

[Also in response to a similar comment from Stan Barber]

I agree with the arguments in favour of deprecating the all-zeroes response,
widely used though it is at present, but I'm puzzled by you and Stan Barber
referring to the first (low) article number being potentially useful. I
don't understand how it can be, since it's value is is either last+1 (no
useful information) or an "arbitrary" artefact of how long ago the value in
the server's "active" file or equivalent was last updated e.g. by expire.

If you both meant the last/high article number, then I'd agree entirely and
the proposed "option B" convention of first=last+1 *or* simply returning
the figures from the active file (or similar; option E) would satisfy the
requirement to spot how much you've missed (i.e. all articles after the last
you've seen, up to and including the highest seen by the server, since the
group's empty). [With an all-zeroes server you could still do this, using
LIST, but I'd agree that is more cumbersome, etc.]

Anyway: as Brian Kantor has pointed out, this discussion seems to have 
taken on a life of its own ... It looks to me as if option B does actually
meet the requirement described above, but if not, then we should discuss
this outside the group to try and pin down the sticking points and then
suggest a solution to the list!

                                John Line
-- 
Cambridge University Computing Service - USENET news manager. Usually John Line
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