Re: LYNX-DEV Re: news: vs. nntp: scheme

[Klaus Weide]

On Sat, 16 Aug 1997, Al Gilman wrote:

> > X-URL: http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month0897/msg00295.html
> >      * Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV News:*
> >      * From: Klaus Weide <address@hidden>
> >      * Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 10:14:06 -0500 (CDT)
> > 
> >                     ...  The original (although now mostly forgotten)
> > distinction between "news:"; and "nntp:"; URLs seems to be that the
> > first is global, the latter is server specific.  
> 
> The only distinction I ever knew was that news: is local and
> nntp: remote.

To me "news:"; means "at any USENET site".  For practical use in accessing
data, the "any" has to be translated into a specific machine and access
protocol.  It's just a useful optimization to use a local server if you
have one.

> Queries that should return the same answer from any server, such
> as "what are all the active NewsGroups in the World?"  would
> normally be asked locally, yes.  But they should use a news:
> scheme because they are addressed to the local server, not
> because they are asking about global metadata about the News
> medium, the way I would analyze the usage.

It seems to me you have cause and effect reversed.

> --
> Al Gilman
>  
> PS: Any good reason to preserve the distinction between
> nntp: and news: scheme-names?

There are useful differences in meaning.  USENET vs. NNTP.  A community of
people (which may not all use NNTP) vs. access to a specific machine
(which may not exchange any messages with USENET).  Even though Lynx
(following others) extends the syntax of RFC 1738 in various ways, so that 
it understands several strings to mean the same string, this doesn't mean
for example that it's a good idea to give out to other people an URL for a
USENET message in the "nntp:"; form.

    Klaus

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