There is a lot of information living out there in netland
that would be nice to have archived in a public (UNIX) access location
that could be gotten automatically.
I would like to propose a method for such access.
The basic method would be automatic answering of fixed-format messages
to a special mail recipient on specified machines.
For example:
To: npois!harpo!whoever!request
Subject: get archive
Request: item-id
This message for instance, would retrieve the item given by
item-id and return it to the originator. The subject field contents
is the specification of the action desired, in this example to get
an item from an archive.
The item-id field could specify the archive (if there is more
than one on a specific machine).
Any machine could set up an archive on any given topic and
then publish (via netnews - of course) the contents, or there could
be a <get toc> command available.
The syntax of the commands would be very simple, and rigidly
enforced. Any bad requests received could be bounced back with a
simple comment about syntax.
To extend to concept of automatic mail requesting, an opinion
polling recipient could be implemented with ease. That is if someone
can provide a nice set of routines that could read mail and handle request
parsing.
Does anybody have such things already? Am I months behind? Am I
years ahead? Comments?
Gregory G. Woodbury
BTL PY 2K-332 x7287
(...!npois!eiss!ggw)