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

Jeff Coffler <jeffc@netmanage.com> Thu, 31 October 1996 18:02 UTC

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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 96 09:49:27 PST
From: Jeff Coffler <jeffc@netmanage.com>
Subject: Re: nntp-extensions Re: ietf-nntp NNTP SEARCH extension internet-draft available
To: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
Cc: bhern@netscape.com, ietf-nntp@academ.com, imap@cac.washington.edu, Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>, Nat Ballou <natba@ims.microsoft.com>, natba@microsoft.com, nntp-extensions@academ.com, Rich Salz <rsalz@osf.org>
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Well, for starters, how many IMAP news clients are there today
(that is, news clients that talk IMAP to a news server to fetch
USENET news)?  Last time I counted, it was zero.

How many news servers talk IMAP?  This could be a non-zero number,
but I'm sure the number is pretty close to zero.

How many news clients are there that talk NNTP?  50?  100?  More?
Probably more, but there are so many - it's hard to say.

NNTP isn't just good for what it does - it's VERY good for what it
does.  It's missing a relatively small number of things (which is
the purpose of the IETF-NNTP and NNTP-EXTENSIONS lists).  Why
rewrite a bunch of clients to adhere to a brand new protocol
when a small number of extensions would completely suffice?

In my opinion, it's pointless to rewrite a client to use a brand
new protocol when a few extensions are needed.  It's sort of like
tearing an entire house down and rebuilding it from scratch solely
because you wanted another window in your living room.

	-- Jeff


--- On Thu, 31 Oct 1996 12:44:51 -0500  Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu> wrote:
> > I strongly disagree with your analysis.
> > 
> > I think that, for reading news, NOTHING is as proven as NNTP is today.
> 
> NNTP works well for what it does, but so does IMAP.  
> And IMAP has more functionality than NNTP's reader protocol.
> 
> Shall we then extend NNTP's reader protocol to have the same
> capabilities as IMAP, but in a different and incompatible fashion?
> Why?
> 
> > 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'm not proposing that we deprecate NNTP.  I assume we'd retain NNTP
> for server to server transfers, and also to allow reading of news from
> pre-existing NNTP clients.  Rather, I'm proposing that we not extend
> NNTP's reader protocol, because we already have an adequately
> specified protocol that does the job better.
> 
> Or if IMAP isn't better than NNTP for reading news, why not?
> 
> Keith
> 
> 
> 

---------------End of Original Message-----------------

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