Re: [Noffle-devel] Filter crossposts using Xref instead of Newsg

[Jim H. <jim...@ac...>]

On 01-Mar-2002 Mirko Liss wrote:
> Noffle parses the Newsgroups:-Header to count the number
> of groups an article is crossposted to. The additional
> XHDR command requires additional bandwidth.

Yep. Bit of a botch, isn't it?

> What about parsing the Xref:-Line for multiple colons?
> The Xref is already part of the overview. Noffle doesn't
> need to fetch additional headers then.

Well, the Xref line isn't necessarily part of the overview. RFC 2980 mandates
the overview contain "subject, author, date, message-id, references, byte
count, and line count" only.

However, Xref is a very common addition to that list, and one that Noffle
should really support (it doesn't at present). I'd rather avoid going to the
article database to get this info when answering an XOVER, so I'm thinking of
adding it to the overview information.

However, I'm concerned that using it for collecting info on the newsgroups an
article is posted to isn't safe. What if one of the groups isn't on the
upstream server? Might then there not be a Xref: record for that group.

-- 
Jim Hague - jim...@in... (Work), ji...@be... (Play)
Never trust a computer you can't lift or you don't control.