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Re: nntp-extensions Re: ietf-nntp NNTP SEARCH extension internet-draft available

Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu> Thu, 31 October 1996 06:03 UTC

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From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
To: Nat Ballou <natba@ims.microsoft.com>
cc: Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org>, bhern@netscape.com, ietf-nntp@academ.com, natba@microsoft.com, nntp-extensions@academ.com, imap@cac.washington.edu, moore@cs.utk.edu
Subject: Re: nntp-extensions Re: ietf-nntp NNTP SEARCH extension internet-draft available
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 19 Oct 1996 22:54:08 PDT." <0849453570514a6IMSMAIL@ims.microsoft.com>
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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 01:00:02 -0500
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> Would you elaborate?  I was under the impression that it would
> be desirable for many clients to use IMAP as a protocol to read
> newsgroups. 

I have the same impression.  

Mail and news are so similar that I have a difficult time justifying a
different search protocol for them -- or at least I haven't seen the
reasons to do so yet.  

I have a hard time justifying either the standards work or the
implementation of an enhanced news reader protocol when we're already
doing the work on a mail reading protocol which is more mature and has
proven its utility in reading news.  It seems like we should either
standardize on IMAP as the news reading protocol of the future, or
come to some understanding as to why this is a Bad Idea.

If IMAP is missing functionality that is required for news, might it
be better to extend it than to extend NNTP in this manner?  (And might
that functionality also be useful for mail?)

Even if we found that we needed to continue to have separate
protocols, when adding new facilities to NNTP, we should seriously
consider adopting IMAP-like ones where they exist.  Why waste code?

Keith

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