Re: Not a www-html matter

In article <332611AC.6B09@cinenet.net>,
Dan Fabulich <dfab@cinenet.net> wrote:
> First, this system WOULD save bandwidth, by virtue of the fact that
> quoted articles would only be re-transmitted between the most local
> server and the reader, rather than tens of thousands of times as the
> quoted sections are flung across Usenet.

For Usenet articles, there is NO guarantee that an article will
arrive on a given server before its followups. This is why the
quoted sections are included.

> Updating the news clients would be easier than you think, because many
> news readers double as web browsers.  

No they don't. Most web browsers double as *news readers*, which is
a different thing altogether. And if upgrading all newsreaders were
really this easy, then we could have gotten a LOT more done on Usenet.

> rather than upgrading every newsreader everywhere all at the same time,
> most would evolve in the regular process of upgrading software.  This

But your scheme *breaks* existing newsreaders. This makes it *required*
to upgrade to a capable newsreader, which is quite different from
an evolution to such newsreaders.

The idea of being able to link directly to a quoted article
is certainly a good one. It is just that, similar to HTML postings
that Netscape introduced in the 4.0 betas, it breaks *every* client
on Usenet, and that is why it is doomed. 

Besides, if we want to do things like this, why not scrap Usenet 
altogether and do it right this time?

-- 
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Received on Wednesday, 12 March 1997 14:17:14 UTC