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From: nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Supersedes problems with rapid-fire articles
Message-ID: <1989Aug31.174054.15398@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 89 17:40:54 GMT
References: <5200@looking.on.ca> <1989Aug30.052459.1166@vicom.com> <1989Aug30.204324.2675@paris.ics.uci.edu> <1989Aug30.225332.18770@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu (Network News)
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 34

coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge) writes:

>I've patched C news here to generate the Lines: header for locally posted
>articles, but I can't see any reason to generate it for articles which
>aren't created locally. Re-writing incoming articles to create a Lines:
>header seems just plain wrong to me. Perhaps it would be a good idea if
>you're running some sort of gateway (news-notes, mailing list, etc) but
>at that point it should be the gateway program's job, not C news'.

>On the other hand, you could have local news that doesn't pass through
>C news (how?). If that's the case, I can see a problem --- but I think
>the problem is in the path taken. Programs mainly intended for passing on
>external news (relaynews, newsspool) still shouldn't do any rewriting not
>required (and only Xref (not propagated) and Path are required, I think).

Adding the code to inews is not sufficient, because not every site
is going to add the Lines header locally.  Thus you end up with
articles being propagated without Lines headers.  Amazingly enough,
many users actually find these headers useful in determining whether
an article is "read-worthy."  _Any_ piece of information aiding in
article weeding is useful enough that it should be present in all
articles.  The only place to properly ensure this is in the relay
software.  Admittedly, most of the net will remain B news for quite
some time (especially if C news is going to cause unnecessary
problems -- efficiency is great, but it is not _everything_), so the
Lines header will show up most of the time.  However, as (if) more
sites switch to C news, this useful header will eventually be lost
and/or useless.

Progress is great.
--
Mark Nagel
UC Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science
ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu         UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel