Re: Why is From: limited?

Roman Czyborra (czyborra@cs.tu-berlin.de)
Sat, 01 Apr 1995 10:23:17 +0200 

Chuck Shotton writes:

> Suppose "bin" owns all WWW documents? Do you think a system admin
> wants to spend all day forwarding stuff to the appropriate person?

Wouldn't any sysop who is so misorganized to install the web pages in
the bin account and generate From headers from it deserve this?

> I didn't say it might not be a good idea. I said that it couldn't be
> implemented in an efficient, usable fashion across multiple
> platforms.

If the HTTP servers running on Microsoft can provide rev=made links
they can also provide From headers. If not, then not.

> HTTP servers ultimately need to sit on databases (object bases), not
> file systems. When this happens, things like this will be easy to
> implement.

And then what header will you use?

	Link: <mailto:timbl@w3.org>; rev="Made"; title="Tim Berners-Lee"

	From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@w3.org>

Please don't tell me the From is so much harder to implement than the
Link or more compatible with existing software on the Internet.

> In the meantime, the value of such protocol candy is minimal when
> other, better techniques exist in HTML for doing the same thing.

The HTML tags have to be added manually and that's why so many web
documents lack authorship information.  An automatically inserted
optional header could help in those cases and may evolve to become the
preferred tag because it's added automatically like the headers of my
mail.

> Extrapolating that all sites must be like your site is faulty
> logic...

I didn't presume that, I have only extrapolated that my site isn't the
only one where HTTP exports files and those files have human owners
nor the only one where sophisticated applications of RFC822 are in
use.

> If it is optional, then it is useless.

There will be plenty of people to benefit from it.  Imagine them
loading a retrieved document into their mail folder to keep or to
quote passages from it and comment on them.  If the From is there the
return To will be filled in already.  For documents that lack the From
the user may or may not be able to manually fill in the address.

> WWW is for anonymous publisher to anonymous reader communication.

Like news, WWW is a communication from prominent publishers to
anonymous readers.

> Please read through the URI/URN standards and the HTML 3.0 standard

I did.  From is not in there yet.

> you'll find plenty of stuff to sate your appetite for features.

I am not asking for new features, I am only trying to prevent an old
and well-established and simple standard from being forgotten.