Subj : XML
To   : Jan Vermeulen
From : Scott Little
Date : Fri Dec 27 2002 10:52 am

 [ 24 Dec 02 21:27, Jan Vermeulen wrote to Scott Little ]

 JV>     You seem to have a complete view of (1) what is vague in SLF, (2)
 JV> what standards are conflicting between them and how they conflict and
 JV> (3) which implementations of what are broken.
 JV>     I must confess that bt now I'm off the track. Would it be
 JV> possible for you to make us a resume?

The system name field may or may not contain a hostname - there is no way to 
detect it reliably.  The domain name may or may not be specified at all.  The 
domain name may be specified in an unusable format.  The phone number field may 
or may not contain a phone number.  The phone field's contents may land a 
newbie sysop in court.  Flag fields are limited to 32 characters.

 JV>     So things have indeed happend but they are considered insignicant.
 JV>     Would you, or David, a list of them?

David probably does

 sl>> And then there are issues that cannot be fixed without breaking
 sl>> software.
 JV>     Tel me which, how and where, please.

Line length limits.  Flag field limits.  Software already expects to find the 
IP in the phone number field, or the domain in the system name field - moving 
it somewhere more appropriate would break them.  Adding extra information would 
require hiding current information from mailers, eg. adding per-protocol online 
times would require hiding all those protocols from current mailers that don't 
know how to interpret the online times.

 JV>     Its easier, but we do not like leaving a lot of debris, so let's
 JV> look at the difficult way, won't we?

As I already said, SLF should be cleaned up, but we must realise it's 
limitations and not try to shoehorn stuff in there that it cannot reliably 
handle.


-- Scott Little  [fidonet#3:712/848 / sysgod@sysgod.org]

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