Re: Niggles in usepro-draft-11

[Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>>>    o  ............  If this
>>>       interval is shorter than the time it takes for an article to
>>>       propagate through the network, the agent might reject an article
>>>       it had not yet seen, so it ought not be aggressively short. .....
>>>                                           ^
>>>                                           to
>
>> It's an unusual formulation in general, but I believe the current
>> formulation is more grammatically correct.  The subject of the dependent
>> clause is "it" and the verb is "be".  If "be" is converted to an
>> infinitive, the dependent clause no longer has a verb.
>
> No, the verb in that dependent clause is "ought".
>
> Consider the sentence "You ought to know better." Surely that is
> gramatically correct, but it needs the infinitive "to know" to make it
> work.

Ah, yes, thank you.  I missed that.  Fixed now.

>>    <t>In some cases, offering the same proto-article to all
>>    injecting agents may not be possible (such as when gatewaying,
>>    after injection, articles found on one Netnews network to
>>    another, supposedly unconnected one).  In this case, the posting
>                                     ^
>                                     ,

I changed it to another supposedly-unconnected one instead.  Using them
both as adjectives rather than separating out the phrase reads better to
me.

>>    agent MUST remove any Xref header field and rename or remove any
>>    Injection-Info, Path, and other trace header field before
>>    passing it to another injecting agent.  (This converts the
>                                           ^^^^^^^^
>                                            (this
>>    article back into a proto-article.)

The parenthetical is a complete sentence and therefore should begin with a
capital letter.

> Yes, but we make a suggestion (explicitly 'pgpverify' now) in the case of
> control messages, but remain devoid of suggestions for cancels.

We can suggest cancel lock.  I almost did, except that it's not widely
deployed like pgpverify is.  There are some implementations, though.

> Perhaps the following alternative wording would convey the sense better:
>
>>>    message.  Accordingly, news servers SHOULD use the same
>>>                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                                                  apply whatever
>>>    authentication and authorization checks for deciding whether to honor
>>>                                           ^
>                                       they already apply
>>>    a Supersedes header field as they use for cancel control messages.
>>>    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                  in the case of
>
> which has the advantage of being shorter, and gives no implication that
> such checks are normal for cancel messages (which, sadly, they are not).

How about this:

      <section anchor="supersedes" title="The Supersedes Header Field">
        <t>The presence of a Supersedes header field in an article
        requests that the message identifier given in that header field be
        withdrawn in exactly the same manner as if it were the target 
        of a cancel control message.  Accordingly, news servers SHOULD
        apply to a Supersedes header field the same authentication and
        authorization checks as they would apply to cancel control
        messages.  If the Supersedes header field is honored, the news
        server SHOULD take the same actions as it would take when honoring
        a cancel control message for the given target article.</t>

I think inverting the sentence makes it clearer.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>