# An alternate proposal for MOO-Cows

Alex Stewart (riche@crl.com)
Wed, 17 May 1995 19:09:00 PDT

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    > Missing Keywords:
    >
    >  I think there should be a keyword [QUERY] and [REPLY] to match [SUMMARY].

    Yeah, actually I was thinking about this type of stuff as I sent off the
    message.. the SUMMARY keyword was kinda stuck in there at the last minute..

    I'm not exactly sure what we need a REPLY keyword for, tho, since tacking on a
    Re: prefix when replying is pretty standard behavior for mailreaders already..

    >  Personally, I think the mailer should bounce anything with a subject line
    >  that starts with "Re:" and contains "[QUERY]" or does not contain "[REPLY]"
    >  or "[SUMMARY]" (or maybe turn the [QUERY] into [REPLY]).

    It kinda depends on how we define QUERY..  If QUERY indicates a request for
    private responses (and a corresponding intent to post a summary later), which
    might be a good way to do things, then there shouldn't be a REPLY at all, just
    QUERY and SUMMARY, and anything posted with a Re: and a QUERY should be
    bounced (if we get too complicated with this, tho, it'll be hard to understand
    all the rules, so we should be careful).

    >  I don't like PROG/APROG (which looks to me like the "a" in sexual/asexual).
    >  I prefer ADV-PROG.

    Well, I started with that in my notes, but part of the point was to try to
    keep the keywords relatively short (so they don't completely obscure the
    subject line of the message).  I figured that since it's something for people
    who know what it is anyway, it wasn't so essential to make it a fully
    descriptive name and it'd be more productive to keep it short..

    >  I also don't like MOOCOWS because the list name has a hyphen.  I suggest
    >  either MOO-COWS, or if the name was chosen not to collide with the list,
    >  just COWS, BEEF, CATTLE, CHEWING-CUD, or some other unrelated-yet-related
    >  word.

    Well, likewise, it's an extra character which serves no real function..  To
    tell the truth I'd rather make MOOCOWS even shorter if possible, but then I
    guess it probably won't be used that much anyway, so..

    >  I'd rather see the keywords first than last, since some mail readers
    >  truncate headers, and since keys aren't likely to be infinite in length.
    >  I'd rather see square brackets than parens since they don't occur so much
    >  in running text.

    If you'll note in the proposal, the most important keyword goes first (for
    that reason), but the additional keywords, if any, are less important (often
    would just be used for filtering or sorting by automatic mechanisms) and it
    was my feeling that in most cases cutting them off would be less detrimental
    than cutting off the actual (often more descriptive to human eyes) subject
    line of the message..

    Take, for example, an announcement about a bug fix for LambdaCore's $network
    object..  which subject line would you rather have your mailreader chop off
    the end of when listing messages to you?:

      NEWS: Bug patch for $network available [SECURITY] [CORE] [LAMBDA] [NET]
    or
      [NEWS] [SECURITY] [CORE] [LAMBDA] [NET] Bug patch for $network available

    ..anyway, those are just some of the reasons behind why I suggested things the
    way I did.

    Oh, and about the brackets vs. parens, I don't really care, and actually
    neither would the filter system under the proposal I presented..  it would
    only check to make sure there was a valid KEYWORD-colon-space at the beginning of
    the message, etc..  The idea was that convention would be enough to regulate
    however the additional keywords were handled..

    Anyway, brackets are fine by me.

    -R
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         Alex Stewart - riche@crl.com - Richelieu @ Diversity University MOO
                             http://www.crl.com/~riche
               "For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky."