From: Clive D.W. Feather (clive@demon.net)
Date: Mon Apr 30 2001 - 05:02:12 CDT
Russ Allbery said:
>> That's a reason to support extensibility! The whole point of designing
>> for extensibility is that you don't know the problems, or solutions, of
>> the future, so you design as best you can to allow new features and
>> experimentation without fear of breaking older software.
I agree with Brad here.
> The correct way to support extensibility is not to make up as many
> different solutions as we can think of and throw them all into a standard
> in the hope that when one of those unforseen problems comes up it will
> happen to luckily coincide with one of those solutions.
True, but ...
> Show me a useful local header.
[...]
> Xref doesn't count as a local header, since Xref also exists to support
> slaving and therefore can't always be deleted when it leaves the news
> server.
Xref is a perfect example of a local header. Note that slaving takes part
within a cooperating subnet, and local headers may be preserved within such
a subnet. Brad's example of his C- headers is another case.
We have a concept. We have an example of it in use. We can see
possibilities for other uses. So I say it's a good thing.
I also agree with Brad that a marking (either L- or a tag) is better than
just documenting them one-by-one (and noting that Xref is a local header
despite not carrying the marker). John Stanley sort of pointed this out in
his unique style.
-- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 20 8371 1037 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | DFax: +44 20 8371 4037 Thus plc | | Mobile: +44 7973 377646