Re: LYNX-DEV problem with 'news' url draft

[David Woolley]

> 
> > but Netscape destroyed the distinction
> > between nntp and new and I think that has now been officially sanctioned.
> 
> I don't understand what distinction we destroyed. Would you care to say
> more about that?

news: refers to the global (message-id) namespace of USENET, whereas
nntp refers to the local NNTP (article number) namespace of a named
server.  Navigator, but not MSIE started using news: for both, with
the result that, with the proliferation of isolated NNTP systems, a lot
of people providing product support through the NNTP protocol started
to use news: instead of nntp: and effectively locked out clients other
than Netscape.

Effectively news: assumes real push technology, where the articles are pushed
out to every *USENET* server in the world, whereas nntp: assumed that you
pulled from the home server.

My understanding is that the nntp: functionality has now been merged with
news: to bring the standards into line with the de facto position.

In some ways this is like LDAP v3 v X.500, in that again one unified
distributed system is being replaced by lots of islands, for which you
need to know the server before you can connect.