From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Sep 29 1999 - 04:38:08 CDT
In <87d7v3pr5d.fsf@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk> writes:
>I'm not sure this holds water any more; having gone over the nntp
>drafts again I see that the old brokenness of case-insensitive names
>(specified in 977 but almost completely ignored by implementors) has
>disappeared, so there may no longer be any technical justification
>for excluding uppercase.
Sure there is no technical justification, but current practice is not to
be ignored. And there is still software arounf (CNews) that will refuse to
create groups with UC letters in them.
Actually, the real justification is to prevent the jokers in alt.* from
creating lots of groups differeng only in the case of their names. That is
just plain too confusing for users. The present rule is very easy to
remember when you are trying to remember, or type out, the name of some
group.
In a well-regulated hierarchy, the administrators would never allow
it, of course (but even then, it would be useful for Tale to be able to
refer to a written rule when refusing such requests). You already know the
problems in uk.* trying to deal with people who want to do stupid things
"just because the written rules don't say you can't".
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506 Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5