From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar-usefor@algonet.se)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 14:56:19 CDT
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> writes:
> I'd rather try large and difficult changes that are entirely optional and
> *really* backward-compatible that can be adopted if they actually provide
> sufficient usefulness to the users than try to pile hack on top of
> incompatible hack to preserve "backward compatibility" that actually
> isn't.
I for my part can accept some incompatibility, if I get something which
is really useful for me.
> The code to implement pretty names on the server side is dead simple. The
> only hard part is the control messages, and even that part isn't too bad.
> Existing programs like actsync could be expanded to synchronize lists of
> pretty names if hierarchies wanted to do that.
>
> One of the interesting questions there would be whether we could design in
> global aliases from the very beginning, and whether that would be useful
> in this context. It's certainly a glaring lack with traditional newsgroup
> naming.
Yes, and that is where is things start to get really difficult.
The more I have read of this discussion the more it have become pain-
stakingly clear to me that "prettynames" is *not* the solution for
the desire to use non-ASCII characters in newsgroup names.
The prettynames idea may have its merits for other reasons, but for it
to completely demote today's newsgroup names to "addresses", there
are a few things that need universal, or at least nearly universal,
deployment:
* Support for the NNTP extensions in clients and servers, as well new
control messages and all that jazz.
* An administrative routine that guarantees that an address has exactly
one "prettyname" available on all servers. This name needs to be unique.
Already the first thing is not an easy task to deliver, but the second is
the realy devilish one.
It appears from Greg's posts that he thinks the second requirement does
not exist. And he is right: this is not a requirement, if the newsgroup
name (i.e. the "address") is still disaplayed and generally known to users.
But in such case, we need to be able to use all characters in the addresses,
not only those of the English alphabet.
Why must there be a one-to-one mapping between "prettyname" and "address"?
Because else people cannot talk to each other. Some might say: "You can
read about that in the group 'Politik, svensk och utländsk'", the thing
in single quotes being prettyname on his server for the group swnet.politik.
But another user might not find this group, because on his server the
prettyname is "Bitching about taxes" (A common description in the Newsgroups
file for swnet.politik). And a third user only sees the name swnet.politik
because his client or server does not support prettynames. Or the server
does not have the prettyname for swnet.politik for whatever reason. And
a fourth user ends up in se.politik.diverse, because on that server
'Politik, svensk och utländsk' maps to that group.
Greg has been handwaving and pointing to AOL, but there is a huge difference
between one single site and zillion of newsservers, whereof the most
are administrated left-handedly if at all. Greg claims that there is no
problem at AOL, but one question: is the Usenet newsgroup name completely
hidden for the AOL users? Or does it appear together with the prettyname?
In the latter case, it is completely understandable that there is rarely
reason for confusion, but then again it goes to prove that prettynames
does not address the needs of us funny people who don't think in English.
To go back to Russ's question, we have, say, 50000 groups out there.
How do we assign global prettynames to all these? For Big-8, Russ, Tale
and some more people can take a weekend or two to go through the list,
and same is true for well-maintained national hierarchies like uk.* or
dk.* But for alt.* or free.*? Or less well-maintained national hierachies
like swnet.* which at best has a rogue "administrator" these days. And
what if the users think the hierachy administrators are idiots for choosing
the wrong prettynames?
Again, these are problems that will not appear, or will be far less
severe, if the current newsgroup names stays in use. But then again,
prettynames are no substituion for UTF-8 in newsgroup names.
The technical stuff - NNTP extensions, control messages etc - can be
covered in an RFC. But the second part, to get human beings to do their
part, can this be covered in an RFC?
May be I'm wrong, and maybe all this will be nicely implemented. And
2006-02-23 will be the day that I mark as the last day I ever saw a
old-style newsgroup.name.
But if Greg and Russ are wrong, we will be discussing on how to be able
to use non-English letters in newsgroup names, eh, addresses, in 2007
as well.
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se