Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: news.software.c
Message-ID: <1989Jul10.171418.29018@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <2076@taux01.UUCP> <318@capmkt.COM> <1989Jul7.173432.21814@utzoo.uucp> <59766@uunet.UU.NET>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 89 17:14:18 GMT

In article <59766@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes:
>None of the existing flags/options is that obscure. If you want
>other people to run C news, then you have to give them some degree
>of comfort that their old scripts will continue to run.

Sigh, after I just finished explaining that we're not in the business of
either (a) implementing the union of wishlists, or (b) providing turnkey
solutions to everyone's problems.  A lot of "other people" don't seem to
mind this, actually.

>Lets do it the other way. What flag/option did you intentionally leave
>out because it was useless.

A complete answer to this question would require meticulous comparison
of first the documentation and then the code (to make sure the documentation
is correct, and to check the fine points of semantics that the documents
sometimes don't cover) for B2.11 and C News.  Rick at least is full time at
UUNET; neither of us is full time on C News.  The reason why dbz didn't
get incorporated into the 7-July patch was not that we don't think it's
a good idea, but that we haven't yet found time for it.  The chance that
we will find time to do an algorithm-by-algorithm comparison of the two
news systems is nil.  Especially since we don't particularly want to.

>> Speaking more generally, not just to Rick:  we are always interested in
>> hearing *specifics* of why missing features are causing real problems.
>
>Rick has a 3000 line sys file and 3 or 4 500 line shell scripts. He is
>not about to verify that each and every option or flag he is using
>was considered important enough to include.

For UUNET we just might stretch a point and do the verifying ourselves,
but we have to see said sys file and shell scripts so we can figure out
what, in particular, is being used.  (Actually we've seen the sys file once
or twice when Geoff had a "sendsys" get away from him, but we don't have
a current one.) 

As I said, our interest is in *specific* problems, not complaints that it
isn't just like 2.11; C News will *NEVER* be just like 2.11.
-- 
$10 million equals 18 PM       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu