Return to geoff CVS log

Up to [Research Unix] / researchv10dc / vol2 / upas

Annotation of researchv10dc/vol2/upas/geoff, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: From arpa!geoff Wed Jul 19 00:26:22 1989
        !             2: From: [email protected]
        !             3: Date: 19 Jul 1989 0026-EDT (Wednesday)
        !             4: To: research!ches
        !             5: 
        !             6: Comments on the draft Upas paper of July 18.
        !             7: 
        !             8: Local authorities probably include Doug McIlroy and Dennis, so don't
        !             9: take my word if you are skeptical.
        !            10: 
        !            11: Punctuation.  I tend to use hyphens to join words of a compound
        !            12: adjective, as per The Elements of Style. I would suggest
        !            13: "network-specific mailers" (at least thrice), "regular-expression-based
        !            14: mini-language", "home-grown networks", "well-understood, and thereby
        !            15: reliable mail system", "very short-lived", and "format-specific
        !            16: mailer".  In "A Comparison With Sendmail", I would punctuate thusly: "We
        !            17: wanted a system that had simpler, and therefore more easily verifiable,
        !            18: rewriting rules." (I might also put a hyphen between "easily" and
        !            19: "verifiable"). In "Message Routing", there is a period after "translate"
        !            20: that should be a comma.
        !            21: 
        !            22: Spelling.  "envelope" needs a final "e".  "variant" contains no "e"
        !            23: (look for "varient").
        !            24: 
        !            25: Grammar.  To get agreement in tense, I would change "there are many
        !            26: implementation changes" to "there have been many implementation
        !            27: changes".
        !            28: 
        !            29: Facts.  Reference 2 (uucp) claims "Unix Programmer's Manual, Seventh
        !            30: Edition, Volume 2, Bell Laboratories, October 1978".  Maybe you guys
        !            31: have a pre-release, but my volume 2 says "January 1979".  I recall the
        !            32: release of Seventh Edition in ~June 1979 just before Usenix (I had just
        !            33: phoned Irma Biren to be put on the "V7 interest list" and she said
        !            34: `Guess what?  It's just been released today').
        !            35: 
        !            36: Figures.  Figure 1 shows the progression "convert -> queue -> protocol",
        !            37: yet I believe the current SMTP progression is "queue -> convert ->
        !            38: protocol" (isn't message-format conversion done at the last moment
        !            39: now?).  Figure 2 might (again) mention message-format conversion as
        !            40: happening in smtpd and smtp.  For symmetry, you might want to show the
        !            41: smtpqer -> queue -> smtp progression on the left side of Figure 2, so
        !            42: that one can read the flow of mail in a given protocol family down the
        !            43: page.  Also in Figure 2, there is a missing or invisible line from
        !            44: /usr/lib/upas/route to the arrow-head attached to smtpqer.  It isn't
        !            45: clear to me how much of the diagram is covered by the name "Upas"; uucp
        !            46: and relations are clearly excluded, but what about smtp and relations?
        !            47: This comes up later, in comparison with sendmail.
        !            48: 
        !            49: When describing \l, it might be worth explaining how "The name of the
        !            50: local machine" is determined (hostname(1), gethostname(2), uuname(1) -l,
        !            51: uname(2), etc.), even if just to say "in a machine-dependent way".
        !            52: 
        !            53: After "If the command does not result in mail delivery", it might be
        !            54: worth parenthetically noting that exactly "|" and ">>" perform mail
        !            55: delivery.
        !            56: 
        !            57: In "Message Format Conversion", I would be interested to know how header
        !            58: information is used in deriving SMTP destination addresses.  "Outgoing
        !            59: SMTP messages must have at least the minimum header information required
        !            60: by RFC822"; what if the don't?  Are they dropped, is the missing
        !            61: information filled in automatically, or is something else done?
        !            62: 
        !            63: Re "Concealing Machine Names": I still get mail from dutoit.att.com and
        !            64: arpa.att.com, so it might be worth mentioning that machine-hiding can be
        !            65: fooled without trying.
        !            66: 
        !            67: Under "Installation" appears the phrase "most major versions of Unix
        !            68: Time Sharing"; is that what you intended, or should it read "most major
        !            69: versions of the Unix Time-Sharing System"?
        !            70: 
        !            71: The third item of "A Comparison With Sendmail" makes sense if "Upas"
        !            72: excludes all auxiliaries (translate, smtp and relations, etc.);
        !            73: otherwise it is clearly false: Upas now possesses most of the features
        !            74: named.
        !            75: 

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.