Subject: Re: #1299 Richard Clayton's comments

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:46:51 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Richard Clayton <[email-masked]> writes:

>In message <[email-masked]>, Harald Alvestrand
><[email-masked]> writes
>>
>>In reviewing Richard Clayton's comments, I find only one substantive 
>>issue: 

>I'd draw attention to my comment on User-Agent. I suggested removing all
>the fancy ABNF and leaving it as free form text (because that's the way
>the world is when you're advertising your products). Charles did say it
>had been copied from HTTP ... but there people (as opposed to machines)
>don't see it -- so the incentives are very different.

I think few people actually "see" it, in either news, mail or HTTP, unless
they are actively searching for some perceived anomaly in the message (and
that can equally happen in HTTP). OTOH, people investigating such
anomalies might wish to use a script to search out instances of the
problem, and having a fixed syntax to look for makes that easier.

>>That of whether or not we need to add definitions for the words 
>>"generate" and "inject", or his long list:

I think the possibly needed pair was "generate" and "accept".

>The list was intended to indicate what a mess it currently was.

>I think it would be better to try and only use the words that have been
>defined...  and the simplest way of doing this is to stop using
>different words for identical things. I am NOT in favour of adding 25
>extra definitions just to make a few sentences flow better.

But I don't think we DO use different words for identical things (though
we do sometimes use broader and narrower classes; e.g. we speak of news
servers "injecting" and "relaying" things, and also of "processing" things
where the distinction between the two is irrelevant).

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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---

From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:35:50 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]> writes:

>issue: That of whether or not we need to add definitions for the words 

I think it was "generate" and "accept" that perhaps needed defining,
because there are used frequently in the form "MUST accept X, but SHOULD
NOT generate it".

>I suggest that if we need it, we add to 1.5:

>Generate: An agent is said to "generate" an article or a header if it did
>not exist before the agent generated it. Examples are when an user agent
>generates a message from text and addressing information supplied by an
>user, or when a news server generates an "Injection-Info" header for a
>newly posted message.

Or maybe:

An agent is said to "generate" some construct if it did not exist
previously, and to "accept" it if received from alsewhere (there
are many constructs which SHOULD NOT be generated but MUST be accepted if
they arrive).

>Is it reasonable to replace all occurences of "injection" with "posting"?
>Or should we define "injection" as a synonym for "posting"?

No, that would be quite wrong. After "posting" an article might be passed
around all over the place behind some firewall (perhaps having some
company boilerplate added), only to be "injected" into the "Real" Usenet
when it finally leaves. We don't care what happens behind that firewall,
but we do care what happens when it is finally injected into Usenet. In
some strange and exceptional circumstances, it may even get injected
twice, but clearly it was only ever posted once.