Re: LYNX-DEV News:*

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 16 Aug 1997, WWW server manager wrote:

[...] 
> The "right" approach for getting details of available groups and their 
> descriptions (assuming you need/use the descriptions, I've not looked
> closely at lynx news access for a while) would probably be something
> like
> 
>  * use LIST to get details of available groups, if the URL includes a 
>    wildcard, otherwise just try to access the group and see if it exists
>    (GROUP command). [Loading an entire active file over dialup just to
>    read a single group would be irritating...]
> 
>  * use XGTITLE <pattern> if supported by the server, to get just details
>    for the group(s) requested (e.g. just comp.* if the URL specified that)
>    or if not supported then
> 
>  * use LIST NEWSGROUPS if available to get a complete list, else no 
>    descriptions available.
> 
> The code would need to keep track of whether a full active file was on hand, 
> or just details of explicitly named groups, and where descriptions were not
> available it would need to distinguish the cases of description sought but
> not available and description not yet sought (e.g. LIST done, so full group
> list available, but user only viewed comp.* so no descriptions retrieved yet
> for other groups). Depending on when lynx needs descriptions available, you 
> might also need to use XGTITLE to get extra descriptions other than those 
> related directly to the user request (e.g. for groups mentioned in 
> cross-posted articles).

This Right Approach sounds like more work than anybody is currently
willing to invest.  (Just a guess, prove me wrong!)

Here's a more Quick And Dirty idea: There should be *some* way to get
the list of active newsgroups based on LIST ACTIVE (instead of LIST
NEWSGROUPS or XGTITLE).  The original (although now mostly forgotten)
distinction between "news:"; and "nntp:"; URLs seems to be that the
first is global, the latter is server specific.  So it might make
sense to use "news:<pattern>" [and maybe also "news://host/<pattern>"]
URLs to mean "get the 'newsgroups' info with descriptions", while
"nntp://host/<pattern>" would mean "get the 'active' info for this
server (and don't bother about descriptions)."  (Pattern could be
empty.)

      Klaus

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