Re: The FAQ system approaches obsolescence. What do we do now?

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Eric S. Raymond (esr@locke.ccil.org)
Thu, 8 Dec 1994 22:03:51 -0500 (EST)

> This is probably the approach I'll be taking in future. Using the right
> tool for the job and all that. Eventually, I may bring some of the anchor
> support down into the newsreader as a fancier way of handling MIME
> external bodies. If this mailing list designed a standard way for
> referring to FAQ's by their URL/URN, that would be one of the first things
> to go in. The other approaches are equally valid; just not my cup of tea.

I lean towards the servient approach, myself.

> To talk tech rather than generalities, maybe we can extend the auxillary
> header of FAQ's. For example, to use the UUCP internals FAQ again (sorry
> for picking on you Ian if you're watching :-) ):
>
> Archive-name: uucp-internals
> Version: $Revision: 1.26 $
> Last-modified: $Date: 1994/10/26 02:39:07 $
> Longer-Version-At: <URL:http://airs.com/uucp-internals-long.html>
> Longer-Version-At: <URL:ftp://airs.com/pub/uucp-internals-long.txt>
>
> The normal FAQ posting would be a shorter summary, probably including a
> natural language description of "where to get the full thing" for those
> without smart newsreaders. Smart newsreaders could detect the
> "Longer-Version-At" field and fire off some kind of request for the rest
> if the user wants it. Maybe even through a ftpmail or httpmail gateway for
> those without IP links.

Clever. Good hack. Not hard to do. <Applause>

> The name "Longer-Version-At" is negotiable. It was the first thing that
> popped into my head. The "<URL:...>" notation is for some of the newer
> newsreaders that will probably have support for that semi-standard but
> won't know about "Longer-Version-At".

I was originally going to suggest making it "WWW-Version-At:" until I realized
I was looking at the wrong abstraction. Instead of thinking of the field as
a WWW pointer, think of it as a kind of reference that can point either at
another news article or at an URL or URN. Maybe it should be called
"Pointer-To:" or "Advertisement-For": :-)

-- 
					Eric S. Raymond <esr@locke.ccil.org>
					WWW: //www.thyrsus.com/~esr/home.html

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