From: Andrew Gierth (andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 03:40:20 CST
>>>>> "Brad" == Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> writes:
>> This is irrelevent. The problem is what to do about fetch by
>> _number_ of a replaced article. You want a fetch of the old
>> article's number to return the new article instead; this requires
>> that when the system which does the numbering receives the new
>> article, it must be able to find the article numbers that were
>> used for the old article. This is a sticking point on a cluster
>> system, because even though the old article is still in the reader
>> spools, it has likely expired from the hub itself.
Brad> Ah. You had expressed the problem is "how do I look up
Brad> <foo@bar>" and did not ask this question.
To be precise, I brought this up in my initial post on the subject.
Brad> Generally, I had not expected replacement to mandate that
Brad> fetches of the old *number* should work,
Still doesn't solve the problem. Part of the functionality that you're
trying to add is for a newsreader to be able to tell "this new article
replaces that old one, we've already read the old one, no need to show
the new article".
Since tracking which articles have been read is almost invariably done
by article number, this means that there must be _some_ way to connect
the new article with the old article number. The draft says that this
is done via Xref, and my objection at the start of this thread is that
this would be expensive at best and impractical at worst.
(Reusing the old article number is in any case not possible over
extended periods of time, as it would play hell with group low water
marks.)
-- Andrew.