New Finger-Protocol Switches

⸺ by Chalres Iliya Krempeaux

⸺ published 2022-11-27T23:49:57-08:00

One way the could be extended —

Creating new finger ‘switches’ —

I.e., creating new finger-protocol request ‘switches’, in addition to the “/W” (i.e., ‘whois’) switch —

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Two specifications were created for the finger-protocol:

IETF RFC-742 (published in 1977), and
• IETF RFC-1288 (published in 1991).

Neither of them were about creating the finger-protocol.

The finger-protocol existed and was evolving for AT LEAST 6 YEARS BEFORE the IETF RFC-742 specification was written!

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RFC-742 & RFC-1288 were always about just documenting what existing software was already doing.

I.e., the people who created the finger-protocol clients, servers, and other software (as well as the people who decided to use it) lead — and creating an updated specification comes later.

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I heavily used finger back in the 1990s.

People are starting to use finger again!

The new finger community should be open to creating new finger-protocol ‘switches’.

For example “/PULL”, “/PUSH”, “/BANANA”, etc.

You could even make ‘switches’ that look like file & directory paths — “/path/to/a/file.ext”.

(Finger ‘switches’ are recognized by starting with a slash (“/”).)