ietf-nntp Thoughts on renaming X commands

[Evan Champion]

Ben Polk wrote:
> 
> What do other people think about renaming XOVER->OVER in
> the spec?
> 
> I'd prefer to document it as XOVER.  There are millions of
> installed programs that use this, and no technical reason I
> can see to change it.
> 
> Same for XPAT.

One of the great problems with protocol extensions is this
convention/requirement that extension name be prefixed by an X, which
makes it very difficult to bring experimental extensions in to the
mainstream.

I understand the reasoning behind prefixing the name by an X, but really
all it becomes is a nuissance (and sometimes much more than a nuissance)
later on.

I have no problem with the names being changed to remove the X (servers
can keep accepting the X'd versions), but I do have a problem with new
extensions requiring the X flag once they have been integrated in to a
product of at least open beta status.

Especially in the case of a very popular product like INN, as soon as a
new feature is available everyone races to support it, and thus it
doesn't really seem like a protocol extension any more.

[This is sort of analogous to Netscape with web browsers...  Sure, the
HTML codes may not be "standard" but within a month of any new browser
release, everyone is using the new codes without even a second thought. 
And in this case you wouldn't expect Netscape to name the tages <XTABLE>
and then rename them when the <TABLE> tag is accepted.]

So, my vote would be to rename the attributes and change the section
regarding naming extensions with an X.

Evan
--
Evan Champion            * Director, Network Operations
mailto:evanc at synapse.net * Directeur, Exploitation du reseau
http://www.synapse.net/  * Synapse Internet