Xref: utzoo unix-pc.general:3239 news.groups:10701
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bbn!bbn.com!levin
From: levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin)
Newsgroups: unix-pc.general,news.groups
Subject: Re: Too much cross-posting?
Message-ID: <42398@bbn.COM>
Date: 7 Jul 89 18:35:23 GMT
References: <674@whizz.uucp> <240@gnosys.UUCP> <1989Jul7.052540.7258@eci386.uucp>
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Reply-To: levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin)
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Organization: BBN Communications Corporation
Lines: 39

In article <1989Jul7.052540.7258@eci386.uucp> woods@eci386.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:
|
|That's not the point!  Since rn doesn't go get the message id's
|for the articles you have read when it starts, assuming it could,
|you can easily end up re-reading things if you don't have the
|luxury of being able to leave one rn running for the entire day.
|I often read groups several at a time, then do other things.  Rn
|simply cannot do Xref matching when you start and stop it between
|groups, and I don't think it should either!

The version of rn I use does better than that.  For each article read,
and for each Xref matched, it updates my .newsrc for the xref-ed
newsgroups.  When I get to those groups, the already seen articles
don't show up -- and this lasts over quitting and restarting rn.  It
even marks articles in unsubscribed newsgroups, so if I resubscribe I
still don't see them again.

Sample .newsrc line--
misc.consumers! 1-16426,16524,16532,16539,16613,16628,16631,16642,16646,16663,16669,16679,16687,16696

Three exceptions to this eminently useful feature:

  The c[atch-up] command does not affect .newsrc, so articles passed in
  this way can yet be seen.  A slower alternative which does get rid of
  the articles in all their incarnations is "/^/j".

  The #*@&!'s who post articles individually to N newsgroups.  Of
  course, no Xref is generated, so I can't avoid seeing the articles
  multiple times.

  Subscribing to a new group:  All articles are unread -- rn doesn't try
  to go back and see what may have been previously seen.

I think we are running rn 2.11.
	/JBL
=
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