In
<4(_dot_)2(_dot_)0(_dot_)58(_dot_)J(_dot_)20040219180004(_dot_)0535c678(_at_)localhost>
Martin Duerst <duerst(_at_)w3(_dot_)org> writes:
It defines a new email header, Archived-At:, to provide a direct
link to the archived form of an individual mail message. We use
this extremely successfully (currently in the form X-Archived-At)
at W3C.
This could also have applications within Usenet. Currently, FAQs etc
posted to news.answers have a "pseudo-header" in the body of the article,
for example:
Archive-name: news-answers/guidelines
Version: $Id: guidelines,v 2.49 98/09/28 20:02:32 jjnichol Exp $
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Copyright: see Section 5
The meaning of that header is "look in the usual archive site, or one of
its mirrors, and look for the file news-answers/guidelines". I don't
overmuch like that "pseudo-header" convention, and I would like to see a
better mechanism, but for now there it is.
Now if an Archived-Header were to be used for the same purpose, it would
look like:
Archived-At:
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers/guidelines>
Observe that the URI doesn't need to be 'http', and even if it is, it
doesn't mean that the document retrieved would be in HTML.
Anyway, this raises two further issues:
1. The syntax should allow a comma-separated list of URIs. This might
allow for the article to be retrieved in various different formats
(presumably the file extension at the end would tell you which).
2. The situation where there are numerous mirrors of the archive site
needs to be borne in mind. Is there already a mechanism within the URI
system for retrieving a resource from one of a number of sites?
If not, would something like the following work:
List-Archive: <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/>,
<ftp://rtfm.mirror.someplace.net/news.answers/>
Archived-At: <news-answers/guidelines>
where the Archived-At is presumed to be relative to one of the
List-Archive alternatives.
This also suggests that the name of the new header should be
List-Archived-At, as others have suggested.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clerew(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave,
CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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