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Rose
Request for Comments: 1082 TWG
November 1988
The next section describes the evolution of discussion groups and the
technologies currently used to implement them. To summarize:
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
2. Keep discussion group mail on one host and give all users a
login on that host (in addition to any other logins they may
have). This is usually a gross inconvenience for users who
work on other hosts, or a burden to users who are forced to
work on that host.
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
Since mailers and user agents first crawled out of the primordial
ARPAnet, the value of discussion groups have been appreciated,
(though their implementation has not always been well-understood).
There are various approaches which can be used to solve some or all
of these problems. Usually these involve placing an exploder agent
at the distribution source of the discussion group, which expands the
name of the group into the list of subscription addresses for the
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
group. In the process, the exploder will also change the address
that receives error notifications to be the request address or other
responsible party.
Finally, a third approach can be taken, which can be used to aid user
agents processing mail for the discussion group: In order to speed
querying of the maildrop which contains the local host's copy of the
discussion group, two other items are usually associated with the
discussion group, on a local basis. These are the maxima and the
last-date. Each time a message is received for the group on the
local host, the maxima is increased by at least one. Furthermore,
when a new maxima is generated, the current date is determined. This
is called the last date. As the message is entered into the local
maildrop, it is given the current maxima and last-date. This permits
the user agent to quickly determine if new messages are present in
the maildrop.
Definition of Terms
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
Note that the last two values are locally determined for the maildrop
associated with the discussion group and with each message in that
maildrop. Note however that the last message in the maildrop have a
different MAXIMA and LASTDATE than the discussion group. This often
occurs when the maildrop has been archived.
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
The following commands are valid only in the TRANSACTION state of the
POP3. This implies that the POP3 server has already opened the
user's maildrop (which may be empty). This maildrop is called the
"default maildrop". The phrase "closes the current maildrop" has two
meanings, depending on whether the current maildrop is the default
maildrop or is a maildrop associated with a discussion group.
All the new facilities are introduced via a single POP3 command,
XTND. All positive reponses to the XTND command are multi-line.
NAME SP MAXIMA
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
MSGNO SIZE
where MSGNO is the number of the message being listed and SIZE is the
size of the message in octets. When reading a maildrop accessed via
"XTND BBOARDS", the scan listing takes the form
where MAXIMA is the maxima that was assigned to the message when it
was placed in the BBoard.
Possible Responses:
+OK XTND
-ERR no such bboard
Examples:
C: XTND BBOARDS
S: +OK XTND
S: system 10
S: mh-users 100
S: .
C: XTND BBOARDS system
S: + OK XTND
S: system 10
S: .
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
The POP3 server closes the current maildrop. The POP3 server then
validates the argument as the name of a discussion group. If this is
successful, it opens the archive maildrop associated with the group,
and returns a multi-line response containing the discussion group
listing. If the discussion group named is not valid, or the
associated archive maildrop is not readable by the user, then an
error response is returned.
Possible Responses:
+OK XTND
-ERR no such bboard Examples:
C: XTND ARCHIVE system
S: + OK XTND
S: system 3
S: .
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
9 ADDRESS
10 REQUEST
11 system-specific: incoming feed
12 system-specific: outgoing feeds
13 FLAGS SP MAXIMA
14 LASTDATE
Possible Responses:
+OK XTND
-ERR no such bboard
Examples:
C: XTND X-BBOARDS system
S: + OK XTND
S: system
S: local general
S: /usr/bboards/system.mbox
S: /usr/bboards/archive/system.mbox
S: /usr/bboards/.system.cnt
S: /usr/bboards/.system.map
S: *
S: mother
S: system@nrtc.northrop.com
S: system-request@nrtc.northrop.com
S:
S: dist-system@nrtc-gremlin.northrop.com
S: 01 10
S: Thu, 19 Dec 85 00:08:49 -0800
S: .
Policy Notes
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RFC 1082 POP3 Extended Service November 1988
o If only the headers (and the first few lines of the body) of
the message are required (e.g., for a scan listing), then only
these are retrieved. The resulting output is then cached, on
a per-message basis.
To conclude: the POP3 is a good thing, not only for personal mail but
for discussion group mail as well.
References
Author's Address:
Marshall Rose
The Wollongong Group
1129 San Antonio Rd.
Palo Alto, California 94303
Email: MRose@TWG.COM