Mark Crispin <MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA> (02/12/85)
I would like to consign to eternal damnation all these mailers
which think it is cute to use lowercase in host names. Perhaps their
implementors should also suffer such damnation, but I'll settle for
mandatory schooling in human factors.
Many terminals do not satisfactorily show the difference between
"1" (the numeral) and "l" (the letter). On the terminal I'm using,
the difference is a single pixel. It is not at all obvious that
"nyu-cmcl2" is "NYU-CMCL2" instead of "NYU-CMC12". Those long UUCP
addresses get even worse.
Getting a terminal with a better font is NOT the answer.
-------David Roode <ROODE@SRI-NIC.ARPA> (02/12/85)
I would like to agree with Mark. It has long been the custom that acronyms are capitalized. Why should Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Macsyma Consortium (MIT-MC), Stanford University, Artificial Intelligence (SU-AI), Bolt, Beranek and Newman Communications Corporation-F (BBNCCF), and the like NOTE be subject to conventions that have been established since the middle ages. (Did they have Acronyms in the Middle Ages? Did they name things with contractions composed of the first letter of each word in a title?) has anyone looked at host names and considered how high a percentage are ACRONYM-based? -------
hornig@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA (02/12/85)
Date: Mon 11 Feb 85 18:39:32-PST
From: David Roode <ROODE@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
I would like to agree with Mark. It has long been the custom
that acronyms are capitalized. Why should Massachussetts Institute
of Technology, Macsyma Consortium (MIT-MC), Stanford University,
Artificial Intelligence (SU-AI), Bolt, Beranek and Newman Communications
Corporation-F (BBNCCF), and the like NOTE be subject to conventions
that have been established since the middle ages. (Did they have
Acronyms in the Middle Ages? Did they name things with contractions
composed of the first letter of each word in a title?)
has anyone looked at host names and considered how high a percentage
are ACRONYM-based?
-------
I will accept this line of reasoning only if people are also willing to
allow hosts with names which are not acronyms to not be capitalized as
if they were. I used to be the liaison for MIT-devMultics (capitalized
just so). It was generally referred to by other hosts as MIT-DEVMULTICS
or Mit-Devmultics, both incorrect.
My mailbox now lives on SCRC-Stony-Brook.ARPA (soon to be
Stony-Brook.SCRC.Symbolics.COM). I haven't even bothered to make our
own mailer deal with that.tomlin@dspo.UUCP (02/13/85)
> Many terminals do not satisfactorily show the difference between > "1" (the numeral) and "l" (the letter). On the terminal I'm using, > the difference is a single pixel. It is not at all obvious that > "nyu-cmcl2" is "NYU-CMCL2" instead of "NYU-CMC12". Those long UUCP > addresses get even worse. > > Getting a terminal with a better font is NOT the answer. > ------- I would suggest getting a better terminal or getting glasses. Blind rules (Lets make everything uppercase) never did anyone any good I can make the same complaint of problems between differentiating between upper case O and the number 0. Which is it: DRI0 or DRIO (its dri0) Decision Resources, Inc. VUBIO1 or VUBI01 (its vubio1) Biologisch Lab. der Vrije Universiteit, afd. Plantenfysiologie, werkgroep Fotosynthese SMOCNAM or SM0CNAM (its sm0cnam) CNAM - Laboratoire d'Informatique IEDLO2 or IEDL02 (its iedl02) Industrial Electronics Development Lab General Electric RIV04 or RIVO4 (its riv04) Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieuhygiene -- Bob Tomlinson - dspo!tomlin@LANL or {ucbvax!unmvax,ihnp4}!lanl!dspo!tomlin Los Alamos National Laboratory - E-10/Data Systems Los Alamos, New Mexico - (505) 667-8495
POSTEL@USC-ISIF.ARPA (02/13/85)
The case of characters in hosts names is not significant. That is, names are to be recognized independent of case. If some host likes to use its name in a mixed case style (e.g., MIT-devMultics), that is fine, but it can't complain that some other caseification makes it's name somehow wrong (e.g., MIT-DEVMULTICS or Mit-Devmultics are still legal names for that host). [As an aside, for years the Multics hosts insisted that the name of my host was "USC-ISIf" (note the lower case f). No one at ISI ever suggested or liked that name. And for a long time we couldn't get the Multics people to change it. As far as i can tell it was the Multics people who started silly caseification of host names.] One thing that does happen to host names is that they are required to be the official names, not nick names or locally used aliases. Sometimes a program fixes this by using the host tables to convert the given name into a number (internet address) then convert the number into the official name. Thus you end up with the caseification that was in the host table on the host where the fix was performed. --jon. -------
Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA (02/13/85)
There is a slight complication here. Somebody along the way is supposed to change nicnames into official names before a message goes out over the net. That means if a user types in a nicname, the message goes out with the capitalization that's in the official host name table... Will the new domain based scheme support lower case letters?
karl@osu-eddie.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste) (02/16/85)
---------- > I would like to agree with Mark. It has long been the custom > that acronyms are capitalized. Why should Massachussetts Institute > of Technology, Macsyma Consortium (MIT-MC), Stanford University, > Artificial Intelligence (SU-AI), Bolt, Beranek and Newman Communications > Corporation-F (BBNCCF), and the like NOTE be subject to conventions > that have been established since the middle ages. (Did they have > Acronyms in the Middle Ages? Did they name things with contractions > composed of the first letter of each word in a title?) > has anyone looked at host names and considered how high a percentage > are ACRONYM-based? ---------- You've got a valid criticism here, I won't argue the basic point too much. However, there's a reason why lowercase names are in use: such usage is common on Unix systems, where darn near *everything* is lowercase. Think about all those acronyms you use daily in Unix: wc is "word count," ar is "archiver," dc is "desk calculator," and cc is "C compiler." Yes, it's wrong; yes, it shouldn't have ever been done this way; but that's the way it is. I believe that all mailers from Berkeley (delivermail, sendmail) squash everything to lowercase just in case someone didn't obey the "convention." For historical reasons, and those alone, it makes sense. -- Karl Kleinpaste @ Bell Labs, Columbus 614/860-5107 +==-> cbrma!kk @ Ohio State University 614/422-0915 osu-eddie!karl