I've come across an unusual URL scheme format, namely news. What is this scheme used for and what are its pros? Im reading an old book and it could be that this is not used anymore.
Example: news:rec.arts startrek
All URI schemes are registered at http://www.iana.org/assignments/uri-schemes.
For news, which is described with "USENET news", the corresponding specification is RFC 5538: The 'news' and 'nntp' URI Schemes.
From the background section:
The 'news' and 'nntp' URI schemes identify resources on an NNTP server, individual articles, individual newsgroups, or sets of newsgroups.
User agents like Web browsers supporting these schemes use the NNTP protocol to access the corresponding resources. The details of how they do this, e.g., employing a separate or integrated newsreader, depend on the implementation. […]
More information about news is given in the section 2.2. 'news' URIs:
The 'news' URI scheme identifies articles by their worldwide unique "Message-ID", independent of the server and the newsgroup.