# Mark acting as Tim's proxy: the revised News section of the URL draft

Mark P. McCahill (mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu)
Sun, 13 Mar 94 12:14:55 CST

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    Date: Sun, 13 Mar 94 12:14:55 CST

    Message-Id: <9403131814.AA00950@boombox.micro.umn.edu>

    From: "Mark P. McCahill" <mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Mark acting as Tim's proxy: the revised News section of the URL draft

------------------------------------------------------------------
News
The news locators refer to either news group names or article message
identifiers which must conform to the rules of RFC 850. A message identifier
may be distinguished from a news group name by the presence of the commercial
at "@" character. These rules imply that within an article, a reference to a
news group or to another article will be a valid URL (in the partial form).

A news URL may be dereferenced using NNTP (The ARTICLE by message-id command)
or using any other protocol for the conveyance of usenet news articles, or by
reference to a body of news articles already received.

Note1:

Among URLs the "news" URLs are anomalous in that they are location-independent.
They are unsuitable as URN candidates because the NNTP architecture relies on
the expiry of articles and therefore a small number of articles being available
at any time. When a news: URL is quoted, the assumption is that the reader will
fetch the article or group from his or her local news host. News host names are
NOT part of news URLs.

Note 2:

An outstanding problem is that the message identifier is insufficient to allow
the retrieval of an expired article, as no algorithm exists for deriving an
archive site and file name. The addition of the date and news group set to the
article's URL would allow this if a directory existed of archive sites by news
group. Suggested subject of study in conjunction with NNTP working group.
Further extension possible may be to allow the naming of subject threads as
addressable objects.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Mark P. McCahill

gopherspace engineer/University of Minnesota
mpm@boombox.micro.umn.edu
612 625 1300 (voice) 612 625 6817 (fax)

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