Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!coolidge
From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Require "Lines:"?
Message-ID: <1989Sep3.160552.25045@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 3 Sep 89 16:05:52 GMT
References: <1989Sep1.220844.300@sq.sq.com> <1989Sep2.200616.8524@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> <1989Sep3.083308.1640@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu (John L. Coolidge)
Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
Lines: 48

weemba@beaver.ics.uci.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
>In article <1989Sep2.200616.8524@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>, coolidge@brutus (John Coolidge) writes:
>>					     I also think the RFC needs
>>a rewrite, and at that time it should be decided if Lines: is worth
>>making required.

>If it or some equivalent is not there, a newsreader can't do a buffered
>article read-in and simultaneously give the reader a percentage.

>What should I do about this in Gnews 2.1?  Include a "please wait,
>this article won't be buffered due to C News idiocy" message?  Feh.

If you're going to put in such a message, it should be more along the
lines of "please wait, news does not force enough support" or some such.
IMHO, a package which adheres fully to some standard shouldn't be
considered "idiotic" when it chooses not to implement a non-required
part of that standard. That's what the entire point of making some things
not required is!

I'm also still not sure Lines: is the place to require such support. It's
just as cheap, once one has already decided to retrieve an article, to
do a stat() on the file and find out (far more precisely than Lines:)
how big a given article is. What? NNTP doesn't offer support for doing this?
Than the real problem is with NNTP support, not with Lines: at all...

Of course, no newsreader that I know of currently uses the stat() idea
to figure out the size of an article directly (their pager does, though,
in many cases), while several use Lines:. For that reason I really
encourage everyone to provide Lines:, because it really is useful
information as things are currently implemented. Anyone who's running
C News should turn on Lines: support ASAP. But I balk at pointing fingers
or calling names at those who DON'T provide Lines: --- they've just chosen
not to do something which is clearly an optional thing to do.

Finally: If Lines: is to be required, I'd like to see it expanded (either
by the same name or by some new name, Size: for instance) to carry wc-like
information. The byte count is clearly useful, and I can envision word
count information having some value at all. If it's required that we spend
the time and space to provide Lines:, let's at least generate a bunch of
useful information all at once.

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1989 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
to provide Lines: