Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 09:13:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: "Jon P. Knight" <J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Curling up to URLs, v0.2
To: "Eric S. Theise" <verve@well.sf.ca.us>
In-Reply-To: <199401072027.MAA01994@well.sf.ca.us>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.05.9401080902.C25593-b100000@suna>
On Fri, 7 Jan 1994, Eric S. Theise wrote:
>
> <gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us/matrix/internet/curling.up.02>
>
This URL is incorrect(!); it should really be:
<gopher://gopher.well.sf.ca.us/00/matrix/internet/curling.up.02>
> Questions are set off by {Question: ...} and there's a request for a
> finger: URL. The project I'm currently working on needs something like
> that right away.
>
The finger URL was discussed before (either here or in the
comp.infosystems.www newsgroup; I can't remember which). A number of
people pointed out that the gopher and finger protocols are sufficiently
similar to allow you to use the gopher protocol to finger people. Try for
example:
<gopher://lust.mrrl.lut.ac.uk:79/0jon>
If you desire more functionality than that (such as a nicer user
interface, ability to handle various options in fingers such as faces,
etc) there are also a number finger gateways available on the Web which
produce a nice HTML formatted output as well. Therefore the need for a
new URL just for finger was not seen by moany people.
Also, in your document, you mention that the news URL has an optional
``message_identifier@host''. I think you'll find (though I will stand
corrected if I'm wrong) that the ``@host'' part is actually part of the
message id. Thus the first article that I've got waiting to read this
morning has the URL:
<news:uk.telecom/CJ9p1y.4IF@festival.ed.ac.uk>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This bit is the message id.
This sounds reasonable as my newsreader (rn) shows the message id's
enclosed in <>'s and the above article's header has the line:
Message-ID: <CJ9p1y.4IF@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Hope this is of use.
Jon
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon Knight, Research Student in High Performance Networking and Distributed
Systems in the Department of _Computer_Studies_ at Loughborough University.
* Its not how big your share is, its how much you share that's important. *