ietf-nntp Thoughts on renaming X commands

[Stan Barber]

> Based on the discussions at LISA, I think that there is going to be
> some rapid change in INN which will push many more things into this
> category. News is probably going to become as much of a moving target as
> HTML shortly. There are just a lot of things which don't work as people
> "expect" them to work. That is to say people who haven't been running news
> since a/b/c news days and have totally different frames of reference.

One of my goals in this work is to set the stage so folks can do rapid 
development of things and those things that work can be moved from
"experimental" to "standard".... Right now, there is no mechanism to do
that, so everything is "experimental" even if it is common and useful.

Is what is happening in the HTML/HTTP world what should happen in the
NETNEWS/NNTP world? It's a good question, but just like in the HTML/HTTP
world, there is no single accepted answer. Do we use KISS with NETNEWS/NNTP, 
or do we make make it into group ware? Again, there is no single accepted
answer.


> Should the protocol definition reflect the good ol'days which haven't
> existed for quite some time, or what really is as they call it in the
> health care industry, "UCR" - Usual, Customary and Reasonable - practice.

The protocol definition (in the draft) is meant to provide basic
functionality (just like RFC 977 did), an extension mechanism and
an authentication/identification mechanism. Then, the idea is to define
extensions to bring the functionality up to the "state-of-the-art" and
possibly move beyond that. I put a few extensions into the draft to 
"prime the pump" a little, but I didn't intend to put all the extensions
I have documented (and a few I have not yet documented) into the draft.
It was my hope (perhaps a vain one) that there would be a series of 
documents that would add the "Usual, Customary and Reasonable" extensions
to the basic protocol as we rolled through the next serveral months. That
way, each extension could be considered on its own merit, without the added
baggage of the dealing with the basic functionality of the protocol. 








-- 
Stan   | Academ Consulting Services        |internet: sob at academ.com
Olan   | For more info on academ, see this |uucp: {mcsun|amdahl}!academ!sob
Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.