PADLIPSKY@A.ISI.EDU (Michael Padlipsky) (03/15/90)
Dave--
Presumably, you wouldn't want your name to be all lowercase if the system
your mailbox was on expected some (or even, historically, all) of the
letters to be uppercase. Since there are still some systems which WOULDN'T
treat "DCrocker" the same as "dcrocker" (even after the much lamented demise
of MIT-MULTICS), I suggest that a better approach would be as follows:
Conservation of Therbligs dictates that Host names be represented in lowercase
(especially since an RFC long about 822 dictated that Host names should be
case-"insensitive"/-irrelevant, as you doubtless recall better than I), but
user/mailbox-name components of netmail "addresses" must be whatever casing
they must be.
(I won't mention how long ago it was that we first went 'round and 'round
on case considerations if you won't--but if you think it's less than 16
years you're wrong, since it was while I was still at MIT....)
cheers, map
P.S. The years do mellow one somewhat: in case "therbligs" is obscure, it's
from industrial engineering/time-and-motion-studies and has to do with
minimal/quantizable human motions/movements. (Named after one Gilbreth, who
"invented" 'em, as I recall.) Thus, another way of putting the "rule" is:
Be shiftless where it doesn't matter, but not where it does.
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