Misplaced Pages

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38-466: The need for a simple encoding scheme that used only keys available on an ordinary keyboard was felt in the early days of the rec.music.indian.misc (RMIM) Usenet newsgroup where lyrics and trivia about Indian popular movie songs were being discussed. In parallel was a Sanskrit Mailing list that quickly felt the need of an exact and unambiguous encoding. ITRANS emerged on the RMIM newsgroup as early as 1994. This

76-441: A "post". Some newsgroups allow posts on a wide variety of themes, regarding anything a member chooses to discuss as on-topic , while others keep more strictly to their particular subject, frowning on off-topic posts. The news admin (the administrator of a news server ) decides how long posts are kept on their server before being expired (deleted), which is called retention . Different servers will have different retention times for

114-447: A carrier group is used for crossposting to aid distribution. This is typically only useful for groups that have been removed or newer alt.* groups. Crossposts between hierarchies, outside of the Big 8 and alt.* hierarchies, are prone to failure. Newsgroups are often arranged into hierarchies , theoretically making it simpler to find related groups. The term top-level hierarchy refers to

152-430: A file uploaded once will be spread to many other servers and can then be downloaded by an unlimited number of users. More useful is that users download from a local news server, rather than from a more distant machine with perhaps limited connectivity, as may be the case with peer-to-peer technology. In fact, this is another benefit of newsgroups: it is usually not expected that users share. If every user makes uploads then

190-457: A level of robust data persistence as a result of built-in data redundancy. However, most users will access using only the client-server commands of NNTP and in almost all cases will use a GUI for browsing as opposed to command line based client-server communication specified in the NNTP protocol. Newsgroups generally come in either of two types, binary or text. There is no technical difference between

228-409: A long while, it was impossible to send binary data as such. As workarounds, codecs such as Uuencode and later Base64 and yEnc were developed which encoded the binary data from the files to be transmitted (e.g. sound or video files) to text characters which would survive transmission over Usenet. At the receiver's end, the data needed to be decoded by the user's news client . Additionally, there

266-444: A news server maintains agreements with other nearby news servers to synchronize regularly. In this way news servers form a redundant network. When a user posts to one news server, the post is stored locally. That server then shares posts with the servers that are connected to it for those newsgroups they both carry. Those servers do likewise, propagating the posts through the network. For newsgroups that are not widely carried, sometimes

304-553: A news server with Transport Layer Security (TLS), TCP port 563 is often used. This is sometimes referred to as NNTPS . Alternatively, a plain-text connection over port 119 may be changed to use TLS via the STARTTLS command. In October 2006, the IETF released RFC   3977 , which updates NNTP and codifies many of the additions made over the years since RFC 977. At the same time, the IETF also released RFC   4642 , which specifies

342-514: A newsgroup, and anybody can remove it, but most news administrators will ignore these requests unless a local user requests the group by name. There are a number of newsgroup hierarchies outside of the Big 8 (and alt.*) that can be found on many news servers. These include non-English language groups, groups managed by companies or organizations about their products, geographic/local hierarchies, and even non-internet network boards routed into NNTP. Examples include (alphabetically): Additionally, there

380-497: A practice called Usenet backup , or uBackup. While commercial providers offer easier-to-use online backup services , storing data on Usenet is free of charge (although access to Usenet itself may not be). A user must manually select, prepare and upload the data . Because anyone can download the backup files, the data is typically encrypted . After the files are uploaded, the uploader has no control over them; they are automatically distributed to all Usenet providers that subscribe to

418-439: Is completion rates and the other is retention rates . The business of premium news servers is generated primarily on their ability to offer superior completion and retention rates, as well as their ability to offer very fast connections to users. Completion rates are significant when users wish to download large files that are split into pieces; if any one piece is missing, it is impossible to successfully download and reassemble

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456-420: Is considered patchy and not consistent across implementations due to lack of standardization. Also, almost no ITRANS implementation fully supports languages like Kashmiri , Sindhi , etc. The ambiguity around Dravidian short-vowels 'e' and 'o' support has been addressed with a new ISO15919 compliant coding scheme, which is uniform across all supported languages/scripts, including nukta. The old version ITRANS 5.3

494-537: Is maintained for backward compatibility. The changed ones are listed below: The newly launched revamped package supports both the old ITRANS V-5.3 scheme as well as the ISO15919 scheme. In addition, the new package can be customized for any specific INPUT codes. Usenet newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using

532-424: Is quite easy to read and pick up. ITRANS transliteration scheme is given in the tables below. The ITRANS method is without using diacritics, as compared to other transliteration methods. While using ITRANS, for proper nouns, first letter capitalization is not possible since, ITRANS uses both capital and small letters in its lettering scheme. The Devanāgarī consonant letters include an implicit 'a' sound. In all of

570-444: Is the free.* hierarchy, which can be considered "more alt than alt.*". There are many local sub-hierarchies within this hierarchy, usually for specific countries or cultures (such as free.it.* for Italy). Network News Transfer Protocol The Network News Transfer Protocol ( NNTP ) is an application protocol used for transporting Usenet news articles ( netnews ) between news servers , and for reading/posting articles by

608-477: Is then discussed in news.groups.proposals . Once the proposal has been formalized with a name, description, charter, the Big-8 Management Board will vote on whether to create the group. If the proposal is approved by the Big-8 Management Board , the group is created. Groups are removed in a similar manner. Creating a new group in the alt.* hierarchy is not subject to the same rules; anybody can create

646-562: The Great Renaming of 1986–1987, before which all of these newsgroups were in the net.* hierarchy. At that time there was a great controversy over what newsgroups should be allowed. Among those that the Usenet cabal (who effectively ran the Big 7 at the time) did not allow were those concerning recipes , recreational drug use , and sex . This situation resulted in the creation of an alt.* (short for "alternative") Usenet hierarchy, under which these groups would be allowed. Over time,

684-517: The Internet . They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news . Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on the World Wide Web . Newsreader software is used to read the content of newsgroups. Before the adoption of the World Wide Web , Usenet newsgroups were among the most popular Internet services. Communication is facilitated by

722-525: The Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) which allows connection to Usenet servers and data transfer over the internet. Similar to another early (yet still used) protocol SMTP which is used for email messages, NNTP allows both server-server and client-server communication. This means that newsgroups can be replicated from server to server which gives the Usenet network the ability to maintain

760-513: The UUCP network, with most article transfers taking place over direct point-to-point telephone links between news servers, which were powerful time-sharing systems . Readers and posters logged into these computers reading the articles directly from the local disk. As local area networks and Internet participation proliferated, it became desirable to allow newsreaders to be run on personal computers connected to local networks. The resulting protocol

798-464: The schwa used in languages like Bengali ([ɔ]) and Assamese ([ɒ]) differs from that of other languages ([ə]), causing a dissonant feeling when typing those languages. Moreover, although both Bengali and Assamese use Eastern Nagari , the phonology of Assamese varies from that of Bengali to a significant extent, causing more friction while typing Assamese. The support for many phones of other languages like Dravidian , Hindustani nuqtas, Sinhala etc.

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836-417: The bounds of the network uses the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) (Internet standard RFC 3977 of 2006, updating RFC 977 of 1986). Newsgroup servers are hosted by various organizations and institutions. Most Internet service providers host their own news servers , or rent access to one, for their subscribers. There are also a number of companies who sell access to premium news servers. Every host of

874-433: The desired file. To work around the problem, a redundancy scheme known as Parchive (PAR) is commonly used. Many major news servers have a retention time of more than seven years. A number of websites exist to keep an index of files posted to binary newsgroups. Partly because of such long retention times, as well as growing uploading and downloading speeds, Usenet is also used by individuals to store backup data in

912-538: The early 1990s, almost same time as RMIM, developed into the full blown Sanskrit Documents project and now uses ITRANS extensively, with thousands of encoded texts. With the wider implementation of Unicode , the traditional IAST is used increasingly also for electronic texts. Like the Harvard-Kyoto scheme, the ITRANS romanization only uses diacritical signs found on the common English-language computer keyboard, and it

950-647: The end user client applications. Brian Kantor of the University of California, San Diego , and Phil Lapsley of the University of California, Berkeley , wrote RFC   977 , the specification for the Network News Transfer Protocol, in March 1986. Other contributors included Stan O. Barber from the Baylor College of Medicine and Erik Fair of Apple Computer . Usenet was originally designed based on

988-409: The hierarchy defined by the prefix before the first dot. The most commonly known hierarchies are the Usenet hierarchies . So for instance newsgroup rec.arts.sf.starwars.games would be in the rec.* top-level Usenet hierarchy, where the asterisk (*) is defined as a wildcard character . There were seven original major hierarchies of Usenet newsgroups, known as the "Big 7": These were all created in

1026-454: The laxness of rules on newsgroup creation in alt.* compared to the Big 7 meant that many new topics could, given time, gain enough popularity to get a Big 7 newsgroup. There was a rapid growth of alt.* as a result, and the trend continues to this day. Because of the anarchistic nature with which the groups sprang up, some jokingly referred to ALT standing for " A narchists , L unatics and T errorists " (a backronym ). In 1995, humanities.*

1064-477: The newsgroup they are uploaded to, so there will be copies of them spread all around the world. Most Newsgroups are not moderated. A moderated newsgroup has one or more individuals who must approve posts before they are published. A separate address is used to submit posts and the moderators then propagate those they approve of. The first moderated newsgroups appeared in 1984 under mod.* according to RFC 2235 , "Hobbes' Internet Timeline". Transmission within and at

1102-599: The platform. The number of newsgroups grew from more than 100 as of 1983 to more than 110,000, but only 20,000 or so of those are active. Newsgroups vary in popularity; some newsgroups receive fewer than a dozen posts per year while the most popular can get several thousand in under an hour. While newsgroups were not created with the intention of distributing files such as pictures, sound and video, they have proven to be quite effective for this. As of 2022, some remain popular as an alternative to BitTorrent to share and download files. Because newsgroups are widely distributed,

1140-613: The same newsgroup; some may keep posts for as little as one or two weeks, others may hold them for many years. Back when the early community was the pioneering computer society, the common habit seen with many posts was a notice at the end that disclosed whether the author had (or was free of) a personal interest (financial, political or otherwise) in making the post. This is rarer now, and the posts must be read more skeptically, as with other media. Privacy and phishing issues have also risen in importance. Usenet newsgroups posters and operators usually do not make money from their occupations on

1178-399: The servers would be flooded; thus it is acceptable and often encouraged for users to just leech . There were originally a number of obstacles to the transfer of binary files over Usenet. Usenet was originally designed with the transmission of text in mind, and so the encoding of posts caused losses in binary data where the data was not part of the protocol's character set . Consequently, for

ITRANS - Misplaced Pages Continue

1216-414: The transliteration systems, that 'a' sound must be represented explicitly. Since ITRANS was primarily designed for Sanskrit (and other modern Indo-Aryan languages ), it lacks full-coverage for Indic scripts of other languages. Specifically, the support for Dravidian short-vowels 'e' and 'o' is considered ambiguous (since Indo-Aryan phonology does not differentiate them from long-vowels 'E' and 'O'). Also,

1254-403: The two, but the naming differentiation allows users and servers with limited facilities to minimize network bandwidth usage. Generally, Usenet conventions and rules are enacted with the primary intention of minimizing the overall amount of network traffic and resource usage. Typically, the newsgroup is focused on a particular topic of interest. A message sent for publication on a newsgroup is called

1292-479: The use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) via NNTP over STARTTLS . During an abortive attempt to update the NNTP standard in the early 1990s, a specialized form of NNTP intended specifically for use by clients, NNRP, was proposed. This protocol was never completed or fully implemented, but the name persisted in InterNetNews 's (INN) nnrpd program. As a result, the subset of standard NNTP commands useful to clients

1330-549: Was NNTP, which resembled the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) but was tailored for exchanging newsgroup articles. A newsreader, also known as a news client, is a software application that reads articles on Usenet, either directly from the news server's disks or via the NNTP. The well-known TCP port 119 is reserved for NNTP. Well-known TCP port 433 ( NNSP ) may be used when doing a bulk transfer of articles from one server to another. When clients connect to

1368-560: Was a limit on the size of individual posts so that large files could not be sent as single posts. To get around this, Newsreaders were developed which were able to split long files into several posts. Intelligent newsreaders at the other end could then automatically group such split files into single files, allowing the user to easily retrieve the file. These advances have meant that Usenet is used to send and receive many terabytes of files per day. There are two main issues that pose problems for transmitting large files over newsgroups. The first

1406-438: Was created for the discussion of the humanities (e.g. literature, philosophy), and the Big 7 became the Big 8. The alt.* hierarchy has discussion of all kinds of topics, and many hierarchies for discussion specific to a particular geographical area or in a language other than English. Before a new Big 8 newsgroup can be created, an RFD (Request For Discussion) must be posted into the newsgroup news.announce.newgroups , which

1444-519: Was spearheaded by Avinash Chopde, who developed a transliteration package. Its latest version is v5.34. The package also enables automatic conversion of the Roman script to the Indic version. ITRANS was in use for the encoding of Indian etexts - it is wider in scope than the Harvard-Kyoto scheme for Devanagari transliteration, with which it coincides largely, but not entirely. The early Sanskrit mailing list of

#430569