Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.cf.uci.edu!uci-ics!nagel From: nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: "Lines:" (Re: Supersedes problems with rapid-fire articles) Message-ID: <1989Aug31.204014.24061@paris.ics.uci.edu> Date: 31 Aug 89 20:40:14 GMT References: <5200@looking.on.ca> <1989Aug30.052459.1166@vicom.com> Sender: news@paris.ics.uci.edu (Network News) Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS Lines: 22 flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes: >Lines: may be nice information but it's useless for transport. >Newsreaders could easily count lines for you; characters if you think >linecounting is too expensive. Characters is more interesting anyway. >(n.b., characters are more expensive to count with record-oriented >files, e.g., IBM mainframes.) Hmm. So you think it is preferable to have newsreaders around the world recreate the same information hundreds if not thousands of times [:-)] than to have the transport system ensure its presence and creating it if necessary once? And are you volunteering to patch all of the newsreaders out there to now generate this information independently? I think some people are forgetting that we are striving toward a better system of sifting through news. Deleting "sift" information such as Lines or Organization is taking a step backwards. -- Mark Nagel UC Irvine, Department of Information and Computer Science ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel