# RE: The use of "?" in URLs

hallam@alws.cern.ch
Wed, 9 Mar 1994 14:33:40 +0100

- Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
- Next message: Mark P. McCahill: "Re: The use of "?" in URLs"
- Previous message: Tim Berners-Lee: "The use of "?" in URLs"

    Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 14:33:40 +0100

    Message-Id: <9403091333.AA12319@dxmint.cern.ch>

    From: hallam@alws.cern.ch

    Subject: RE: The use of "?" in URLs

Tim writeth :-

>At the time of retrieval, the actual protocol operations
>vary from protocol to protocol. For gopher, you have to
>put in a tab -- no big deal. In WAIS you have to perform
>a different operation (a much bigger deal than putting a
>tab in!). In FTP and NNTP you can't do it.

Ah but you can!

First lets get away from the idea that the web connects to NNTP. In fact
what we do is to connect up to a library which does properly what NNTP does
badly.

We can easily consider searches of the sort :-

NNTP://newserver.cern.ch/comp.infosystems.www?subject=JPEG
NNTP://newserver.cern.ch/comp.infosystems.www.misc.split-groups?from=HALLAM
NNTP://newserver.cern.ch/comp.infosystems.www?keywords=NNTP

At some point I would like to move to a system where we jetison NNTP as
the client mode interface and use HTTP instead. This would allow
authentification, negotiation and all sorts of nice WWW type stuff.

As an experiment I tried writing out the functionality of all the mxrn functions
in URL/HTML type terms. The one part that I did not manage to set up properly
with our current technology is removing read anchors from menus. (this is not
a URL question but what the heck... ) If the anchor is put arround the whole
list item entry this can be resolved in the client :-

<a href="<messageid>"><LI>Why keep reading messages ?</A>

For FTP I think there are also possibilities for using the ? part. So
Tims case is even stronger than he put it.

    --
    Phill H-B

- Next message: Mark P. McCahill: "Re: The use of "?" in URLs"
- Previous message: Tim Berners-Lee: "The use of "?" in URLs"