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From: karl@osu-eddie.UUCP (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: lowercase host names
Message-ID: <107@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Feb-85 16:10:26 EST
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.107
Posted: Fri Feb 15 16:10:26 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 19-Feb-85 06:16:18 EST
References: <8264@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Organization: You really don't want to know
Lines: 25

----------
> I would like to agree with Mark.  It has long been the custom
> that  acronyms are capitalized.  Why should  Massachussetts Institute
> of Technology, Macsyma Consortium (MIT-MC), Stanford University,
> Artificial Intelligence (SU-AI),  Bolt, Beranek and Newman Communications
> Corporation-F  (BBNCCF), and the like NOTE be subject to conventions
> that have been established since the middle ages.  (Did they have
> Acronyms in the Middle Ages?  Did they name things with contractions
> composed of the first letter of each word in a title?)
> has anyone looked at host names and considered how high a percentage
> are ACRONYM-based?
----------
You've got a valid criticism here,  I won't  argue the basic point too much.
However,  there's  a reason why lowercase names are in use:  such  usage  is
common on Unix systems, where  darn  near  *everything*  is lowercase. Think
about  all those acronyms you use daily in Unix: wc is "word count,"  ar  is
"archiver," dc  is  "desk  calculator," and  cc  is  "C compiler." Yes, it's
wrong; yes, it shouldn't have ever been done this way; but that's the way it
is. I believe that all mailers from  Berkeley (delivermail, sendmail) squash
everything to lowercase just in case someone didn't obey the "convention."

For historical reasons, and those alone, it makes sense.
-- 
Karl Kleinpaste @ Bell Labs, Columbus    614/860-5107  +==-> cbrma!kk
                @ Ohio State University  614/422-0915  osu-eddie!karl