Comments on MCP/2.?

[Andrew Wilson <a.wilson@elsevier.co.uk>]

Strewth.  It ocurrs to me that some of my last message was a little
elliptical.  Surely a sign of confusion.
 
The stuff about user agents is gospel, the rest of it is dodgy.
 
My confusion comes from one way that tkMOO-light works.  A user connects
and sends a message to the server:
 
        @xmcp_challenge
 
The server reponds with:
 
        '$#$xmcp version: 1.1'.
 
The client responds with:
 
        '...  authentication_key nnnnnnnn'.
 
So, after the client has sent @xmcp_challenge the whole thing goes like
regular MCP.  By saying that the client should go first, what I mean is
that the client should do something to the server to make the server
send the '$#$xmcp version: 1.1' message.  Merely connecting to the
server is not enough to warrant the server's sending the '$#$ ' message
when there is no other form of capability information (@client-o) made
available to the server at the instant that the client connects.
 
I apologise if my constant reference to xmcp is muddying the waters.
 
Grumble,
Ay.

Andrew.Wilson@cm.cs.ac.uk          http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/User/Andrew.Wilson/