Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!mailrus!ncar!ames!pacbell!hoptoad!capmkt!brent
From: brent@capmkt.COM (Brent Chapman)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Review of NN, a Usenet news reader
Keywords: rn, .newsrc, b&d
Message-ID: <339@capmkt.COM>
Date: 27 Jul 89 22:09:47 GMT
References: <1836@papaya.bbn.com> <1150@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> <1050@unocss.UUCP> <402@laas.laas.fr> <2794@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Capital Market Technology, Inc.; Berkeley, CA
Lines: 22

asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
>In maybe 6.4 or so, whenever Kim gets to it, NN will support leaving certain
>articles unread (right Kim?), which will probably nead a different format,
>maybe even the *standard* .newsrc file format.  What's the big deal about
>having a different format anyways?  If you use NN why even need to bother with
>RN?

It's important because "rn" isn't the only thing that expects a .newsrc file.
The example that springs immediately to mind (and I'm sure there are others)
is the "arbitron" program that gathers the data used to calculate the various
USENET readership and propogation statistics.  Arbitron works by reading the
.newsrc file of all the users on the system.  If they're using nn, they don't
have a .newsrc (or they have one that hasn't been touched in a while, if they
used to use rn), and thus don't get counted in the survey.


-Brent
--
Brent Chapman					Capital Market Technology, Inc.
Computer Operations Manager			1995 University Ave., Suite 390
brent@capmkt.com				Berkeley, CA  94704
{apple,lll-tis,uunet}!capmkt!brent		Phone:  415/540-6400