Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!nc386!allbery
From: allbery@nc386.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Review of NN, a Usenet news reader
Message-ID: <1989Aug2.024702.4879@nc386.uucp>
Date: 2 Aug 89 02:47:02 GMT
References: <2794@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <404@laas.laas.fr> <2803@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <327@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> <2804@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: allbery@nc386.uucp (Brandon S. Allbery)
Reply-To: allbery@nc386.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Organization: North Coast Computer Resources, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 44
In-reply-to: asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth)

In article <2804@mace.cc.purdue.edu>, asd@mace (Kareth) writes:
+---------------
| Thanks for informing me of this feature of systems.  The systems that I use
| are not set up on networks like NNTP, so I really don't know much about that.
| I can see the problems you can encounter in that type of situation.  In such
| an environment, is it necessary to use different news readers? (the readers are
| stored on each client, and may or may not have what you regularly use?)  Or
| are the newsreaders run off the server?  If they're run off the server, I'd
| see no problem as you wouldn't need to switch news programs.
+---------------

Think "heterogeneous network".  Not all, or even necessarily most, networks,
are all capable of running the same binaries on every machine.  And rlogin and
telnet can be inefficient compared to NNTP, or slow in the case of a remote
NNTP connection.

The real world is not as cut-and-dried as you think; if it were, NNTP probably
wouldn't even be necessary because everyone would simply mount someone else's
spool directory.

+---------------
| me that NN's approach to handling the rc file (vs. .newsrc) is more efficient.
+---------------

Not that much more efficient for the loss of flexibility.  The cost of
searching for a colon or exclamation mark via a program isn't very high in
this case.

+---------------
| Okay, okay.  You've convinced me of the validity of needing a .newsrc.  Now
| anybody gonna help me or Kim or somebody to write something up to use it?  If
| you had a program that could convert back and forth between .newsrc and NN's
| rc would that be enough?  Or not?
+---------------

Not enough; NN already does this to some extent (set newsrc), but LOSES the
information placed there by other newsreaders.  THAT is the problem.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc	     allbery@NCoast.ORG
uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery		    ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu
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