Subject: More ideas for faces

From: Shannon D. Appel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 91 17:12:32 -0700

I. Remote Face Protocol

Ability to grab a face from a remote machine, much like finger.  It would
be useful because your database would not have to constantly balloon. if
you have limited diskspace.  The cost, of course, would be time.  It should
be implemented in such a way that it checks for a remote face as a last
resort, and maybe only with a flag on.

II. Faced

There are 4 copies of faces running soda right now.  Something that would
be much more efficient would be one server program to do all the work,
which then sends out all the info to all of the clients that are running.
With an extension of this, you could allow the server to be accessed by
remote machines, and then you only need the database on one machine.

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From: [email-masked] (Mike Bolotski)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 91 09:54:56 EDT

>>>>> On Mon, 29 Apr 91 17:12:32 -0700, Shannon D. Appel <[email-masked]> said:

SA> I. Remote Face Protocol

SA> Ability to grab a face from a remote machine, much like finger.  It would
SA> be useful because your database would not have to constantly balloon. if
SA> you have limited diskspace.  

We're working on it here at the AI Lab, albeit slowly, given other time
constraints.  The main problem is the NEWS support; all other formats
are easily supported by a server.

==
Mike Bolotski          Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT
[email-masked]       Cambridge, MA  (617) 253-8170

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 May 91 9:52:36 BST

> are easily supported by a server.

Can't the nntp protocol for remote news gathering be extended to add
a call to fetch a face as well as fetching articles/active lists/etc?
I have been looking at such an idea for an X-based news browser that
I am developing here.  It would need a command GET FACE or something
similar, to be added in addition to the current nntp commands like
LIST NEWSGROUPS, LIST, LISTGROUP, etc.  The problem is pushing for 
such a command to be made an nntp standard.  I only have experience
of nntp via rn and nn news reader packages;  I don't know who should
be contacted to get such an addition to the protocol - it wouldn't
matter if progs like rn, nn, etc didn't initially use the faces
facility, but it would be there if enabled.

Tim