rpk@lmi-angel.UUCP (02/05/87)
A few months back, somebody mentioned that ``ma'' couldn't mean
Massachusetts as a distribution because it was already used inside AT&T.
Maybe the solution is to structure distributions.
For example, the machine I'm posting to could be in org/lmi.com
(organisational) and geo/ma.usa (for geographical location). The sense of the
naming after the slash is like an Internet domain, although they are not the
same. indomain/foo could be mean the distribution encompassing the Internet
domain named foo (including only USENET news machines, of course).
Summary: a distribution would be named like:
locator/name<n>...name<0>
<locator> is made distinctive so that there is no confusion with Internet
domains (which can then be incorporated into the scheme), and to emphasise
that each ``locator'' is simply a means of naming membership. All the other
naming elements are used to partition the distribution.
Names for distributions that the user includes in articles would be
canonicalised at ``post time.'' If a new header line was not appropriated
for the new scheme, things would work as follows: At first, old names recognised
across USENET would NOT be canonicalized until everybody was running with
the new scheme. New names would break because simple distributions only use
string comparison, but that would be acceptable because any new names should
use the hierarchical scheme to avoid namespace clashes.
--
Robert P. Krajewski
Internet/MIT: RPK@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
UUCP: ...{cca,harvard,mit-eddie}!lmi-angel!rpk