On Monday January 13 2014 10:23, you wrote to Bj÷rn Felten:
BF>> From what I've seen so far, there's not a single person that BF>> will advocate the level part of the CHARS kludge, so lets get rid BF>> of it once and for all.
ml> you're seeing a few people in here talking about it... what you are ml> not seeing is current practise which is done by all the software being ml> used on the network... as long as a majority of software emits and/or ml> uses the level parameter, the documentation is correct... what are you ml> going to do when you remove that level parameter and break software ml> all over the network?
As I see it, there is no added value in dropping the level parameter, but doing so may break backward compatibility. So no pros for dropping it, just cons.
When we were to redo Fidonet from start, we would probably do without the level parameter. It is not very useful. Sometimes however we just have to live with the consequences of decisions made in the past. We do not know if there is still softare around that will break when the level parameter is omitted, but why take the chance? It doesn't eat bread, so the recomenation for new sofwtare to include it when writing and ignore on read seems to be adequate.
