nntplib and xover

[Martin von Loewis]

rickp at telocity.com (Rick Pasotto) writes:

> On 18 Sep 2001 19:31:16 +0200 in comp.lang.python, Martin von Loewis
> wrote:
> > rickp at telocity.com (Rick Pasotto) writes:
> > 
> > > Some news servers return the Xref: line in response to the XOVER
> > > command. Currently the nntplib does not include this line.
> > > 
> > > 1) Will this be included in future versions?  2) What is the best
> > > way to get this line now?

[my response deleted]

> What are you trying to say?

Not knowing what Xref: is, and why it would be nntplib's
responsibility to include it (since it ought to come from the server,
not the client), I completely misunderstood your question.

So let me try again.

1) Unless somebody implements a patch to provide that feature, it will
   not be included in future versions. Anybody implementing such a
   patch should study RFC 2980 carefully, and make use of the "LIST
   OVERVIEW.FMT" command if supported by the server. In addition,
   designing the return value of an advanced xover method is tricky,
   as it would need to accomodate the additional fields, without
   breaking the guarantee about the length of the tuple that is
   currently returned.

2) It is probably best to invoke .longcmd('XOVER', start+'-'+end) on
   the NNTP object, and to split the response into lines and fields
   yourself.

Regards,
Martin