From: Brad Templeton (brad@clari.net)
Date: Fri Nov 21 1997 - 17:07:00 CST
So should I take it from this debate that nobody else is in favour
of just creating a second, higher level newsgroup namespace that is
more flexible, can use extended character sets (as well as spaces,
and long, natural language explanatory names) and can have its own
hierarchies (where a group need not be in just one hierarchy any more
than a file on a unix system has to.)
If people are going to suggest making newsgroup names that will break
old software, so that people have to write new code anyway, am I the
only one who says, "let's do it right?"
Nobody names anything users are going to work with and select by
mouse/menu/substring search with cryptic, short, spaceless names any
more. Even most filesystems have gone this way when users have
menus or name completion and thus don't have to type the names.
A group should not be called "news.software.b" it should be called
"USENET: Format and Transport Issues" If you want to type it in on
a keyboard, you should have a system that lets you type a pattern and/or
get completion, so you type less than "news.software.b" but get a
name everybody understands.
Of course the original names would still stay in the headers, and could
still be hand-typed by those who want to.
But if nobody else likes this I'll shut up.