From: Brad Templeton (brad@clari.net)
Date: Fri Nov 21 1997 - 19:33:30 CST
On Sat, Nov 22, 1997 at 12:42:05AM +0100, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> One thing does not exclude another. Your idea has some merits,
> but I believe that the present-day namespace will continue to
> flourish for quite a few more years. It seems to me that your
PRobably, but not if this is the only way to have a non-ASCII group name.
> Besides, your example makes me shiver, as it reminds me of Microsoft
> Exchange. :-)
Microsoft doesn't get it 100% wrong, they just don't get it right enough
to warrant their market share.
I grew up with unix names but I know when I say "temp" to an ordinary
person they spell it "temp" and not "tmp" as I do. And Ken Thompson said
in his famous quote he would "spell creat with an 'e'" if he had it to
do over again.
I tend to like short names myself, but I've seen the bulk of users and
they want things that they can understand just by looking at it, and
remember the meaning of easily. You need some training -- not much,
but some -- to know that "news.admin.misc" is the group for USENET
politics, but none to know a group called "USENET: Misc. Administrative, Policy
and Political Issues" is about that.
Of course, again I presume you would never type the latter, you would only
pick it from a menu or type in words like "usenet policy" and have it give
you a completion menu of the groups with those strings.