# Re: news: and nntp: URLs

Mitra (mitra@path.net)
Thu, 25 Nov 1993 09:37:57 PDT

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    From: mitra@path.net (Mitra)

    Date: Thu, 25 Nov 1993 09:37:57 PDT

    In-Reply-To:  Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@www3.cern.ch>

    To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch

    Subject: Re: news: and nntp: URLs

    Message-Id:  <9311250938.aa02560@pandora.sf.ca.us>

On Nov 25, 3:09am, Tim Berners-Lee wrote:
} The news: namespace was called news: because it is in fact one
} of Karen's namespaces which do NOT imply an access protocol in fact.

Thats why its closer to a URN, i.e. it names the thing, doesnt specify
where it is.

} 1. In REAL USE, nntp servers are NOT globally acceesible, and
} to make them so would be an abuse of NNTP. For that you use
} oetr things. So you can't use these URLs in any sort
} of reference except between people using the same
} new server.

Or as members of a list or search returned by Veronica for example.

} 2. An article may have many group/number paths as it is posted
} to many groups

Multiple URL's single URN fits our model.
}
} 3. As we know, the numbers are different on different hosts

Host is part of the URL.

} 4. You can call it an access algorithm, but you have no way
} of deriving this nntp: url from any other sort of name
} such as the message-id esxcept by retrieving the message
} [HEAD] using its message-id.

This is where the biggest disagreement comes, I have two ways currently
of getting these URLs, they get returned by Veronica, and they appear as
the path in all the Gopher->News gateways. Typically you get a list of
these URLs in response to some kind of query to the gateway (such as the
list of articles in this group).
}
} The argument -- at which I regret not having been present --
} seems to have been along the lines:
}
} 1. "nntp" represents better what the "news" URL is.
} 2. As it's now called "nntp" it ought to be something different.
}
Actually Tim, the argument went in the other direction.
1) The news URL is not a URL, lets rewrite it so it is
2) Since its now different, lets give it a different name, to avoid
gratuitously breaking WWW.
}
} It is this fearsome urge to create taxonomies to constrain things
} which are different into boxes of nominal similarity which is
} preventing progress. Theer was a feeling I think (Mitra?) that
} news: URIs were not locator-enough in feel, and ought to be
} reduced in level. This stems from the URL/URN taxonomy and
} is not useful. news: urls are what they are. They are things
} which ACTUALLY APPEAR in the Newsgroup: and references: lines
} of news messages. (I am not iunterested in URls for
} .newsrc files which are the only place the group/num things
} appear).

If .newsrc was teh only place these things appeared, then I'd agree with
you, but I've named two other places group/article#'s exist and work in IIIR
appliations (contrast this with zero places where I've seen applications
that will actually retrieve a message-id style URL)
}

- Mitra

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