Re: NNTP authentication problem with Pan...

[e Messiah superpimp org]

On Wed, Oct 06, 1999 at 01:54:40AM -0400, Matthew Berg wrote:
> First off, I want to thank e.Messiah for writing Pan.  It truly is a
> sight for sore eyes after using Netscape Mail for the past 3 years.  

Thanks!

> Aside from providing a workaround for anyone who may have come across
> this problem, I would like to make a possible change in Pan's NNTP
> session code.  Rather than immediately sending AUTHINFO commands at the
> beginning of the session, it may be desirable to provide them only when
> the server has denied access to a particular resource (i.e. has returned
> a 450 or 381 status code.)
> 
> My reading on the current draft NNTP specifications did mention that
> clients were not intended to offer AUTHINFO unless explicetly asked by
> the server. Though it is now in the draft that servers should accept it
> if offered, it was not in the origional drafts and may cause issues with
> other server implementations that have not updated to the current
> recommendations.	

I implemented it the easy way so that I wouldn't have to check for
authentication requests every time Pan issued a command.  So far this
hasn't caused any problems, and I probably won't try to fix it until
someone reports a server that can't handle authentication at the start
of the session.
(Or unless somebody makes a real convincing argument, and/or provides
some nice patches :) )

> (P.S. The number one item on my wishlist of yet-to-be-implemented
> features in Pan is the ability to open attachments based on MIME type
> from within Pan.  Preferably using the Gnome MIME repository. :)

This feature is most definately planned.  We will use the Gnome
MIME settings to launch "handlers" for binary attachements.

Matt

-- 
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UNIX was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things,
as that would also stop them from doing clever things. 
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