Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: dbz is a must!
Message-ID: <1989Jul11.032003.11116@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Jul4.183539.19106@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <9568@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> <1989Jul9.043700.11769@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1989Jul9.191033.8620@utzoo.uucp> <1989Jul10.145737.4605@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 89 03:20:03 GMT

In article <1989Jul10.145737.4605@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes:
>>>1) "C" news articles don't have a "Lines: xxx" header...
>>
>>... "Lines:" has always been optional...
>
>Hmmm...  Ok.  So why the gratuitous omission?  Believe it or not, that was a
>USEFUL header line; you could tell at a glance how long the posting that
>follows is.  Now that useful piece of information is gone.

Opinions vary on how useful it is.  The size of the article in bytes is
a better measure of the length of the posting for most purposes; that's
what rn uses.  It's also a lot less likely to be wrong, which "Lines:"
often was.  Personally I have no strong feelings either way about
"Lines:", but Geoff loathes it.

>What about my other complaint (C) - constructions of commands in the sys
>file which used to work (specifically, parenthesis encasing shell
>statements) which now don't...

Geoff says, roughly:  "tsk; this is a real bug; fix, probably one line,
is coming".
-- 
$10 million equals 18 PM       |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
(Pentagon-Minutes). -Tom Neff  | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu