Re: Documet ids (was Archie, WWW access directly to files, and document ids
Edward Vielmetti (emv@msen.com)
Tue, 18 Feb 92 23:39:44 -0500
Message-Id: <m0lGj60-000HxNC@heifetz.msen.com>
To: timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch (Tim Berners-Lee)
Cc: Brewster Kahle <brewster@think.com>, jcurran@nnsc.nsf.net,
Subject: Re: Documet ids (was Archie, WWW access directly to files, and document ids
In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 18 Feb 92 16:44:35 +0100.
<9202181544.AA20333@ nxoc01.cern.ch >
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 92 23:39:44 -0500
From: Edward Vielmetti <emv@msen.com>
Throughout the years people have used different ways to
describe files available for anonymous ftp. that has never
been standardized ever. no reason to believe it ever will
be.
If we are going to come up with a special kind of document
that refers to a new document type that has the semantics
of "pointer to file available for anonymous ftp", then it
should be assigned a WAIS type tag, described, and specified.
I'd suggest the tag AFTP. Someone write a spec, we'll all
write code, & be done with it. (There's plenty of data after
all.) It would be better to do that rather than to use a TEXT
type tag and bicker about the format.
I don't think it would be hard for the WWW gateway to WAIS to
do special things to documents if they had a different type,
and then use that to convert AFTP type documents to WWW format.
Ditto gopher, archie, etc. clients.
If it's TEXT, on the other hand, it can be *anything*. Please
don't overload the semantics of the name of the server or the
accidental formatting of the contents of the document. I would
like to create AFTP records to stick into many servers.
--
Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com
MSEN Inc., 628 Brooks, Ann Arbor MI 48103 +1 313 741 1120
"Things are glued together with spit and bailing wire now."