Re: [Pan-users] Multiple Server support for PAN: Need a spec

[Charles Kerr]

On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 08:57:28AM -0500, Gorwood, Steve wrote:

> 1)  Assign each server a number 
> 2)  Maintain a single composite list of newsgroups.  Each entry
> in the list of newsgroups will have an added 32 bit field which
> will have a bit set for each server which contains that newsgroup.
> 3)  When you download article headers for a group, maintain a single
> composite
> list of article headers.  Each entry in the list of article headers
> will contain a new 32 bit field which will have a bit set for each
> server which contains the article.
> 4)  When trying to download the articles, try the valid servers in
> sequence until the article is successfully downloaded.
> 
> Beyond the necessary cleanup issues (for example, when you delete
> a server), why is it more complicated than this?

Many servers don't handle retrieving bodies keyed by Message-ID;
using the group's index number for the article is more reliable.
To do this we'll have to map between message-id and
server-group-index tuples, as described in
http://mail.freesoftware.fsf.org/pipermail/pan-devel/2002-October/000220.html .

Also I think we need to tackle how to best define the new/unread/deleted
article lists in a DB setting.  More background on this is in the same link.