From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar-usefor@algonet.se)
Date: Sun Oct 06 2002 - 07:57:10 CDT
greg andruk <gja@meowing.net> writes:
> Yes, of _course_ clients need to be updated to make good use of _any_
> change to the way newsgroups are named. And, of course, the claims made
> by some on this list that there are pre-USEFOR clients that will
> automatically "just work" are false.
However, the use of UTF-8 only requires user agents to be updated (and
contrary to what you say, not in all cases). Solutions with prettynames
or use of other charsets also require changes in server software.
The one thing you achieve with solutions where the on-the-wire name
of the newsgroup is pure ASCII, is that you can say that it will not
break any technical interoperability without even looking. The suggestion
to use UTF-8 requires the effort to investigate, but the result of
the investigation is positive to a great extent.
But, alas, without updated software, the extensions are not very useful
at all. And if they are not useful, people will not use them. And if they
are not used, why waste the effort of implementing them?
True, when we discuss a the new group in the se.* hierarchy (not that we
do this anymore), we would have to determine both a regular name and a
"prettyname". But the regular name would be at least as important as
the prettyname, and all the concerns we have today how a name which
includes едц will be interpreted when replaced with aao would still
remain, and we would in some cases still have to bend over backwards
to find a name which does not have any such problem.
> Mail has long had ways to avoid that kind of overloading. When my
> friend sends me mail from work, the message is from
> Doe, Jane [XYZ] <zx345@xyz.example.com>
>
> But when I send mail to her, it will appear as
> Jane <zx345@xyz.foo.com>
> or even just
> zx345@xyz.fo.com
>
> But the name I type into my mail program is just
> Trouble
>
> ...and I have the choice of seeing it displayed as the nickname or the
> full version in my address book (or from the directory service, if at work).
And that is a feature that could be implemented locally in your newsreader,
without any need for support elsewhere, nor in servers nor in RFCs.
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se