Date: Thu, 21 Nov 91 17:51:35 GMT+0100 From: timbl (Tim Berners-Lee) Message-Id: <9111211651.AA11536@ nxoc01.cern.ch > To: Anders Gillner <awg@sunic.sunet.se> Subject: Re: Internet-gopher , WWW, WAIS, etc Cc: NIR, www-talk Anders, >> systems within systems within systems! > [expletive deleted] mess !!. I have written to Joyce R. and said that we need some kind of structure and a worldwide cooperation about datastructure. There two areas -- orgainzing the data structure itself, and coordinating addressing/protocols/formats. Both are in embryonic stages at the moment so a few concurrent ideas must be useful to the world. Both can also, to a certain extent, be resolved by a "survival of the fittest" principle (as Brewster argues in [1]): Those reviews, overviews and indexes which have the best coverage, signal to noise ratio and good links will be read most, and quoted most. It would save time, though, if all the projects pooled resources a bit more. Some unaligned funding would help of course... Various people (CC'd on this mail) are talking about putting together a mailing list about resolving technical issues. Personally, I don't mind where the list is -- it sounds like a good idea. The problem seems to be working out the overlap with lists such as www-talk, wais-talk, archie-people, the anon. ftp IETF WG., various public lists [2], etc etc. Perhaps someobody could try to make a "state of the nation(?)" list of who's doing what now. Tim __________________________________________________________ Tim Berners-Lee timbl@info.cern.ch World Wide Web project (NeXTMail is ok) CERN Tel: +41(22)767 3755 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Fax: +41(22)767 7155 References: [1]Brewster Kahle on WAIS concepts (much applies to other systems too) www file://quake.think.com//pub/wais/doc/wais-concepts.txt [2] List of some lists involved in NIR: www http://info.cern.ch:8001/wais.cic.net:210/lists network information retrieval