Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utstat!geoff
From: geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer)
Subject: Re: C News missing Lines: header
Message-ID: <1989Jul21.001122.4986@utstat.uucp>
Organization: Statistics, U. of Toronto
References: <1989Jul20.054808.8724@tarpit.uucp>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 89 00:11:22 GMT

Vanilla C inews does not generate Lines: headers and in general produces
a fairly minimal set of headers (I initiated getting rid of
Posting-Version:, Relay-Version: and Date-Received: headers years ago).
Lines: headers are a waste of bytes (a byte count is usually what's
wanted and it can be obtained much more reliably via fstat(2) or "ls
-l"), and are often wrong due to mangling of either the Lines: headers
or the message bodies by intervening networks or mail or news software.
(As long as there are B news sites, B news will insert them anyway as
the articles propagate.)

You may see Lines: headers in articles originating on C news sites
because intervening B news sites have lovingly hand-crufted Lines:
headers on articles passing through (thus breaking one of the maxims
of good performance for network software: though shalt not look at thy
bits).

We have a slightly better fix in the works which will get the Lines:
count right, if you uncomment the code to produce it.  I favour deleting
the code altogether, but there are some very vocal fans of Lines:
nearby.
-- 
Geoff Collyer		utzoo!utstat!geoff, geoff@utstat.toronto.edu
``... skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth.'' - Herbert Spencer