Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Supersedes problems with rapid-fire articles
Message-ID: <1989Sep6.211714.27087@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <5200@looking.on.ca> <1989Aug30.052459.1166@vicom.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 89 21:17:14 GMT

In article <1989Aug30.052459.1166@vicom.com> lmb@vicom.COM (Larry Blair) writes:
>... For some reason, Geoff and Henry decided that C News wouldn't
>properly handle supercedes...

More accurately, we decided (and we still believe this was the correct
decision at the time) that it wasn't worth handling "properly".  Control-
message handling is already a colossal pain, spreading slimy tentacles
everywhere inside relaynews.  Supersedes is even worse, as it's *both* a
regular message *and* a control message.  Until quite recently, the only
real use of Supersedes was in a couple of low-article-count groups that
used it for occasional updates.  And it isn't in the RFCs at all.  So we
considered superkludge an adequate approach.

Unfortunately, Brad seems to have found a real, legitimate, desirable
reason to make heavy use of what was previously a rather marginal feature.
So...

Our current plan is to fix relaynews to cope.  Actually, what's going to
happen is a radical revision of control-message handling, to split it out
into a largely-separate module, invoked (when necessary) at the end of each
batch.  This will implement Supersedes promptly and efficiently while
cleaning up relaynews considerably.  It will also give a noticeable net
performance boost.  Don't expect it right away -- this is going to be a
fair bit of work for Geoff.
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu