From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 05:12:32 CDT
In <3EB2A5BD.4060501@Sonietta.blilly.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>If you wish to demonstrate an effect on interoperability, something more
>than hand-waving will be required. You cannot demonstrate such an effect
>by attempting to stifle discussion.
It all depends on how you define "interoperability".
If you say that the sole purpose of Netnews is to deliver articles from
posters to readers accurately and without loss, then you can adopt a
narrow definition of "interoperability" as that which interferes with the
delivery.
But if you accept that Netnews includes much "added value", in the form of
bells and whistles (i.e. "features") in user agents, such as threading,
following up, spam fighting and other user conveniences, and if some of
these "features" require syntactic assistance to make them work (e.g.
extra headers, "Re: " in subjects, "-- " before signatures), then you need
a broader definition of "interoperability" which encompasses interference
with the working of those features.
And note that we are already somewhat in that second camp, because we
define headers such as Mail-Copies-To, Followup-To, References, Archive
and Injector-Info which are quite unnecessary to ensure correct delivery,
but are nevertheless of value for the smooth running of the overall
system.
Now deciding which features fall into which category is not easy.
Nevertheless, we have to decide, because it determines what goes into
USEFOR and what goes into USEAGE. So we are going to have some interestng
discussions in the coming weeks.
It should be noted that my initial proposal put body conventions
(including the "-- " before signatures) into USEAGE (we had always
envisaged that). "Re: " will be an interesting borderline case because, as
Bruce has pointed out, it could benefit from some ABNF assistance.
But I am about to attack that problem, and I shall examine alternative
possibilities as part of that.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk 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