From: Usenet News Support (support@deathstar.prodigy.com)
Date: Wed Apr 28 2004 - 14:50:21 CDT
On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> Here are the changes to the draft to incorporate the Injection-Date
> header. In addition to what is shown here, all occurrences of
> "Injector-Info" are changed to "Injection-Info", and there are a few other
> consequential changes.
>
> Comments?
> 5.7. Injection-Date
>
> | The Injection-Date-header contains the date and time that the article
> | was injected into the network (or more precisely, the time at which
> | the injecting agent first offered it to a relaying agent, which might
> | be some time later than when the injecting agent first began to
> | process it). Its purpose is to prevent the reinjection into the news
> | stream of "stale" articles which have already expired by the time
> | they arrive at some relaying or serving agent.
Let's start here... "the time at which the injecting agent first offered
it to a relaying agent" is something no one will implement, and therefore
we shoudn't specify. Taken literally it implies that the header should not
be written until it is actually offered to another host, which in some
cases may be hours or even days after receipt. I can't believe that it
will be so implemented, I'd bet that it will be the date accepted and
queued for relay.
> |
> | header =/ Injection-Date-header
> | Injection-Date-header
> | = "Injection-Date" ":" SP Injection-Date-content
> | *( ";" extension-parameter )
> | Injection-Date-content
> | = date-time
> |
> | See the remarks under the Date-header (5.1) regarding the syntax of a
> | date-time and the requirements and recommendations to which it is
> | subject.
> |
> | An Injection-Date-header MUST NOT be added to an article except by an
> | injecting agent, hence it will never be present in a proto-article
> | (8.2.1). It MUST be added by each injecting agent but, once added,
> | it MUST NOT subsequently be changed or removed by any other agent,
> | even during reinjection (8.2.2).
> |
> | NOTE: The date-time would normally be expected to be later than
> | the date-time in the Date-header, but differences between the
> | clocks on the various agents and other special circumstances
> | might vitiate that; no provision is made for any such
> | discrepancy to be corrected - better that the injecting agent
> | should just insert the correct time as it sees it.
> |
> | Since this header is newly introduced in this standard, other
> | agents cannot rely on its always being present; therefore,
> | provision is made (8.3,8.4) for the Date-header to be used when
> | it is absent.
> |
> | This header is intended to replace the currently-used but nowhere-
> | documented header "NNTP-Posting-Date", whose use is now deprecated.
I'd bet that most people will simply use the existing code for the current
header, which gets added when the article is accepted via POST regardless
of relaying.
I agree with the intent of this header, but I doubt it will be implemented
to the letter of what we specified, and I suggest that simply blessing the
existing NNTP-Posting-Date header would work fine, given a few clear rules
about not rewriting the header if it is present in the offered article.
-- bill davidsen SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center Project Leader, USENET news http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com Please send usenet-related mail to news-support@prodigy.net