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

[Jeff Coffler <[e-mail]>]

I strongly disagree with your analysis.

I think that, for reading news, NOTHING is as proven as NNTP is today.
NNTP is routinely used to transfer perhaps billions of messages (when
you consider all the news server machines on the Internet today) daily
both between server to server and server to client.

I see no reason that IMAP should replace NNTP.  Perhaps it should augment
it (such that servers of the future can answer on both ports), at the
most, but certainly not replace.

NNTP is very useful.  And I, for one, applaude Stan's efforts to both
document existing practices, and document extensions mechanisms.

	-- Jeff


--- On Thu, 31 Oct 1996 01:00:02 -0500  Keith Moore <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > 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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