Network Working Group D. Meyer
Request for Comments: 543 SRI-ARC
NIC: 17777 31 July 1973
Network Journal Submission and Delivery
Augmentation Research Center
Stanford Research Center
Menlo Park, California 94025
The on-line documentation will be maintained as (userguides.
journal-netsub,). Hard copies are available from Marcia Keeney.
The first implementation of a Network Journal Submission and Delivery
system is now eXPerimentally up. This system allows use of the NIC's
NLS Journal System without entering NLS. Network users may submit
text files written on their host systems using their mail subsystems
(e.g. SNDMSG, FTP, TELNET). The mail will then be converted at SRI-
ARC into NLS files, journalized, and sent to the specified recipients
according to their preset Journal delivery options. A newly added
option permits the user to receive automatic Journal delivery (of
citations to journalized documents) at his host via the Network mail
protocol.
Overview
Network mail sent to SRI-ARC (NIC) will be entered into the NIC
Journal system if a slash appears in the user-name. To get the mail
to the NIC, you may use either the FTP, TELNET, or mail subsystem
provided by your local system.
The author's NIC Ident(s) are assumed to appear before the slash; the
recipients' NIC Ident(s) after it. Idents should be separated by
spaces. (See scenarios in branch 3)
(e.g. jew / mdk dhc)
When this format is detected by the NIC, the Network Journal system
will be invoked. At SRI-ARC the mail will be transformed into an NLS
file, assigned a unique catalog number, stored permanently under that
number, and a notice of it will be sent to all the listed recipients.
If the slash is not found, the mail will be handled in the normal
way.
Delivery of Journal citations may now be oBTained via the Network (as
well as to an NLS file at SRI-ARC and in hard copy). If you wish to
receive your Journal mail at you host computer, contact the NIC (see
RFC510 -- 16400,).
A more detailed description follows.
NETWORK JOURNAL SUBMISSION
The remote user prepares the text of his Journal article in his host
using whatever tools he has available to him. He may wish to prepare
long articles beforehand using his text editor (e.g. TECO if he's a
TENEX user). For short messages, he may be content with the basic
editing features (sUCh as backspace character and line delete)
provided by his submission subsystem.
Connecting to the NIC
To get the mail to the SRI-ARC FTP server, you must either:
1) via FTP and TELNET mail subsystems, connect to SRI-ARC's FTP
server process, then issue the FTP mail command, or
2) use the mail subsystem provided by your local system.
For TENEX SNDMSG mail: put "@nic" at the end of the "User:"
field.
(e.g. jew / mdk dhc@nic)
If you wish to send the mail as a SNDMSG message to some
people as well as submit it to the Journal, you may treat the
Journal form as one name, follow it with a comma, and then list
other names of which SNDMSG is aware, separated by commas.
(e.g. jew/mdk dhc@nic, meyer, white)
Specifying Authors and Recipients
The user invokes Network Journal submission via his mail subsystem.
Network Journal Submission is invoked by a user-name field of the
following format:
author $(SP author) [SP] / [SP] recipient $ (SP recipient) [SP]
[ ; conversion algorithm]
"$(..)" means "any number of occurrences, possibly
zero, of what's inside the parentheses"
"SP" means "space"
"[..]" mean "the contents of the brackets are optional"
i.e., author(s), slash, recipient(s), optional semicolon and
conversion-algorithm
e.g., jew/mdk rww cr dcs rww jcn / sri-arc ;h
'Author' is the NIC Ident of (one of) the user(s) submitting the
article, and 'recipient' the Ident of (one of) its intended
recipient(s). An Ident, as usual, may designate either a "group" or
an "individual". SRI-ARC will verify the idents. If it finds them
correct, it will accept the mail. An invalid Ident will cause the
mail to be rejected; the user will get an error message and have to
start over. The first author Ident will be taken to be the clerk.
If the SRI-ARC mail subsystem finds the slash in the user-name field,
the Network Journal Submission system will be invoked; otherwise, the
mail will be treated as normal Network mail (delivered to the
Directory specified by the user-name).
Specifying an NLS Conversion Algorithm
Optionally, the sender may specify the algorithm by which his
sequential message file is to be converted to NLS format. This
choice is made by inserting:
; conversion algorithm
anywhere in the 'user-name' field (e.g. jew/mdk rww;s). (This should
be before the "@nic" for SNDMSG.) Legal values for conversion-
algorithm are:
s -- Insert Sequential, each line an NLS statement (default
conversion-algorithm)
a -- Insert Assembler with structure
m -- Insert Assembler without structure
h -- Heuristic Insert Sequential, double <CR>s indicating end of
statements, assuming no right justification in the source file.
j -- Heuristic Insert Sequential, double <CR>s indicating end of
statements, assuming right justification in the source file (for
those who put multiple spaces between Words to line up the right
margin, multiple spaces will be removed)
By "Heuristic Insert Sequential", we mean that the Insert
Sequential algorithm attempts to be smarter about handling
statements and levels. Statements are delimited by two
successive carriage returns. Statement level will be
determined by the amount the statement is indented. If it is
indented more than the previous statement, it will be taken to
be a substatement and put down a level; if it is the same as
the previous statement, it will be on the same level. If the
statement is indented less than the previous statement, the
program will look for a past statement with the same
indentation and put it at that level, The indentation of a
statement is taken to be that of either the first or second
line of the statement, whichever is less (to ignore paragraph
indentation, for example). This is good from 1 to 12 levels.
Carriage returns at the end of full (within 10 characters of
the right margin, i.e. 62nd column) lines are replaced by
spaces.
This algorithm is an attempt to answer a very difficult need.
It won't always do just the right thing, but it should often
provide the intended result. The user is encouraged to
experiment with it; suggestions will be welcomed.
Titling the Message
Once the conversion has been performed, an optional title,
signaled by the label 're:'. 'title:', or 'subject:' is searched
for in the first statement of the message text. (The label may
either be all upper or all lower case, or the first character
upper and the rest lower case.) If a label is found anywhere in
the statement, the line of that statement beginning with the first
non-blank character following the label and going up to the first
carriage return (and line feed) or else to the end of the
statement is taken as the Journal title, and the statement
containing the title is deleted from the file, Any substructure
will be moved up a level.
The submission is equivalent to the NLS 'Submit Message' command if
th NLS file (after the title statement (if any) has been deleted) has
only one statement in it besides the origin statement; in such a
case, the message in its entirety will be delivered as part of the
Journal citation. Otherwise the Network submission is equivalent to
'Submit File'; only a reference to the Journal document will be
delivered to each of the recipients.
TENEX SCENARIOS
If you're a TENEX user, you can do Network Journal Submission with
any of the following subsystems (system responses are in square
brackets):
(1) SNDMSG (The header and trailer supplied by SNDMSG aren't
stripped off, and one can only title the document
by using the h or j conversion algorithms and
beginning the message with a carriage return (and
line feed).)
[@] SNDMSG <CR>
[Type ? for help]
[Users:] JEW/DHC@NIC <CR>
[Subject:] Title of message <CR>
[Message: (? for help):] Text of message ... <^Z>
(Note: ^B allows the insertion of a sequential
file at any point in the text of the message.)
[jew/dhc at NIC -- ok]
(2) FTP
For short messages:
[@] FTP <CR>
[HOST FTP User process x.xx.x]
[*] CONN <SP> NIC <CR>
[ Connection opened]
[ Assuming 36-bit connections.]
[*< SRI-ARC FTP Server x.xx.x - at DAY DATE TIME]
[*] QUO <ALT> MAIL JEW/MDK RWW <CR>
(pause)
[*< Type mail, ended by a line with only a "."]
[*] QUO <ALT> Re: Title of Message <CR>
[*] QUO <ALT> line one of the message <CR>
[*] QUO <ALT> line two of the message <CR>
[*] ...etc...
[*] QUO <ALT>.<CR>
(pause)
[*< Mail completed successfully]
[*] DISC <CR>
[*] QUIT <CR>
For longer ones:
[@] FTP <CR>
[HOST FTP User process x.xx.x]
[*] CONN <SP> NIC <CR>
[ Connection opened]
[ Assuming 36-bit connections.]
[*< SRI-ARC FTP Server x.xx.x - at DAY DATE TIME]
[*] MAIL <ALT> sequentialfilename <CR> [Confirm] <CR>
[ to remote-user] JEW/MDK RWW <CR>
(pause)
[<Begin mail file transfer.]
[ xx. bytes transfered, run time = xxx. MS,]
[ Elapsed time = xxxxx. MS, Rate = xxxx Baud]
[*< Mail completed successfully]
[*] DISC <CR>
[*] QUIT <CR>
TELNET (for short messages only)
[@] TELNET <CR>
[User Telnet x.x DATE Type HELP<cr> for help.]
[*] NIC <SP> FTP Server [is complete.#]
[300 SRI-ARC FTP Server x.xx.x.x - at DAY DATE TIME]
MAIL JEW/MDK RWW <CR>
(pause)
[350 Type mail, ended by a line with only a "."]
re: Title of Message
line one of message <CR>
line two of message <CR>
...etc...
.<CR>
(pause)
[256 Mail completed successfully]
<^Z>
[*] DISC <CR>
[*] QUIT <CR>
NETWORK JOURNAL DELIVERY
Three modes of Journal delivery are currently available to NLS users;
each user can select any one or a combination of ways of receiving
journal mail:
(1) ONLINE -- an entry containing the text of the mail or, for
longer items, a citation to it, made in the user's initial
file, which resides in his directory at SRI-ARC.
(2) HARDCOPY -- the text of the mail is sent to the user (i.e.,
to an address of his choosing) via the U.S. Postal Service.
(3) NETWORK -- Journal mail will be delivered to a user via the
Net, to a host and mailbox of his choosing. If you wish
this option, let the NIC know and give them the name of your
host and mailbox.
Short messages ('Submit Message') will be delivered in
their entirety to the remote user, preceded by the usual
sort of header giving author, date and time, citation
number, and title:
JEW 4-APR-73 11:21 15490
SMFS Runs on TENEX 1.31 at the NIC
Message: Dave-- The NIC came up on TENEX 1.31 on
1-APR...
A citation to larger Journal articles ('Submit File')
will sent:
JEW 4-APR-73 17:51 15491
Farming Batch Work out to UCSB -- A Scenario
Location: SRI-ARC <MJOURNAL> 15491.NLSXNLS
In place of the usual link (which appears in ONLINE
delivery) is a host name (SRI-ARC) and a pathname to
the file at the host. Using it, the remote user or a
process running on his behalf can fetch a copy of the
file from SRI-ARC FTP. The parameter ';XNLS' signals
SRI-ARC's FTP server process to convert the NLS file
to sequential form (using a default conversion
algorithm) before transmission to the user through the
Net.
By Network Journal delivery, mail will be delivered via FTP mail
command to a host (i.e., to it's FTP server process) and mailbox
address of the user's choosing.
These two parameters will be maintained in the NIC Ident file
for each user who selects NETWORK delivery, and can, like his
delivery mode, be viewed or changed from the Ident System in
NLS. Initial values for host and mailbox address have been
solicited from the Network community (see RFC510 -- 16400,).
The implementation of Network Journal submission and delivery
described here is a first-cut. A more flexible and slightly cleaner
user interface will be fashioned when the File Transfer Protocol
(FTP), upon which both implementations will rely, is revised to deal
more comprehensibly with the issue of mail delivery, forwarding, and
recording (see RFC524 -- 15146,1).
[This RFCwas put into machine readable form for entry]
[into the online RFCarchives by Via Genie 12/99]
