Re: finger url

Daniel W. Connolly (connolly@hal.com)
Mon, 22 Aug 1994 15:45:06 -0500

In message <9408221827.AA12374@math.bu.edu>, Nick Galbreath writes:
>
>Is the finger URL really even needed, except for ease of use? It
>seems to me a 10 line perl CGI script would take care of it with a
>calling of . <a href = "http:/cgi-bin/finger?[name@university.edu]">

You have to remember who the relevant parties in the communication are.
If I'm reading my mail, and somebody says

"For more info about our product, finger info@widget.com"

and all I have is a WWW client, I can't exactly log in to widget.com,
start up an HTTP daemon, and install a CGI-bin script.

I can, however, do an "Open URL" or a goto, or whatever and say:

gopher://widget.com:79/1info

I think some folks might like to be able to use something a little more
straighforward, e.g.:

finger://widget.com/info

But it seems to me that if there were sufficient need for this, somebody
would have implemented it by now.

I believe in descriptive, not prescriptive specifications. Design by
committee is BAD.

Dan