Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: Precedence of operators Message-ID: <1737@peora.UUCP> Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 08:32:50 EDT Article-I.D.: peora.1737 Posted: Tue Oct 15 08:32:50 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 00:19:42 EDT References: <593@down.FUN> <10476@ucbvax.ARPA> <12317@Glacier.ARPA> <273@graffiti.UUCP> <1132@sdcsvax.UUCP> Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl. Lines: 77 Keywords: "Here we go again", @-precedence, !-precedence, domains, "last time" > I can't agree. This may be a religious debate, but the use of "Bang > precedence" is what causes all sorts of ambiguities in the system. Actually, it's not a "religious debate"... it's a debate between those who advocate minimizing the impact on sites unconcerned (even unaware) of this whole issue, and those who think everyone should change at once for the common good of all. > This is the magical part about domains: they present an isotropic > address space. This is not a property of domains per se; that is another of the points where this debate becomes confused. This is a property of having a routing language in which you can specify domains without the domains being tied to a higher-precedence token in the routing language (which would limit where the domain names can be used in the strings). It's ironic that both sides here are arguing for a language in which all tokens have equal precedence in order to solve the above problem, but one group wants to give one token (@) higher precedence, then say "don't use it," whereas the other wants to give it equal precedence. That's the only point of disagreement. I think everyone agrees that extending the UUCP routing language to include domain names without their being tied to the "@" token is a good idea. Thus I don't think anybody here who is advocating !-precedence disagrees with the problem or solution you've stated. I certainly agree, and I suspect many others would as well, that writing an all-! string for this route is the solution to this problem. However, it is an *extension* to the existing syntax that need be implemented only at sites that wish to serve as "gateways" or "bridges" between networks, and it does not *require* you to have @-precedence. Having the syntax like this: ...!site1!site2.dom!site3!... is not at all incompatible with having strings like this: ...!site1!site2.dom!site3!joe@joesvax.ARPA in which ! still has precedence, as it does now, and which "accidentally" work at present. The only difference in the "other" approach is that it proposes that because a few sites currently, on their own, give "@" precedence already (those that route everything through Sendmail), then everyone should. But my argument is that those sites giving "@" precedence was an error -- it certainly resulted from installing software incompatible with the existing non-Berkeley UUCP sites -- and that the error should be corrected at those sites, not by making everyone everywhere do it too, especially when it doesn't give you any advantage. Now, this brings in the second problem you combined with the first one, how to specify the addresses in the user interface. And I agree there that you should give @-precedence, as long as you also allow the user to write addresses with all !'s in them for use with special cases. Because, as I said many times the time before, RFC822 is a standard for the format of the message headers, the things the user interacts with, whereas the routing language is a *separate* language altogether. The only case where it is not is where people run everything through Sendmail, regardless of whether or not they need to; and *that* is indeed a religious debate ("I like sendmail a lot and it gives me features I need and I don't have time to make it work right with UUCP so I'll just convince everyone to change the way UUCP works to suit sendmail"). My next posting will be on incompatibilities between MH.5 and non-Berkeley, post-Edition-7 Unix*-like systems. I.e., I am not going to continue restating the above again and again... please reread the above thoroughly before restating the same thing that has been stated repeatedly before, because I'm not going to restate MY position again, unless some *new* argument is presented to counter it. -- jer *Unix is a trademark of AT&T. -- Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: Ofc: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer Home: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jerpc!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642