Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!tale
From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: .newsrc file fixer
Message-ID: <1989Oct4.034508.24331@rpi.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 89 03:45:08 GMT
References: <4784@orca.WV.TEK.COM> <8437@boring.cwi.nl> <2672@taux01.UUCP>
	<8439@boring.cwi.nl>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 40
In-Reply-To: dik@cwi.nl's message of 3 Oct 89 13:09:43 GMT

In article <8437@boring.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
Dik>	cp .newsrc .newsrc.old
Dik>	sed -e '/!/d' .newsrc.old >.newsrc

This is not a perfect cure-all, even in spite of the following
argument about new groups.  It will, for one, trash the first line of
my .newsrc, which is an "options -n" line which includes arguments of
the form !not.this.group.   "sed '/! /d' .newsrc.old > .newsrc" would
save it.

In article <2672@taux01.UUCP> amos@taux01.UUCP (Amos Shapir) counters with:
Amos> The point of keeping unsubscribed groups in .newsrc is that whenever a
Amos> new group is created, rn will ask you if you want to add it.

In <8439@boring.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
Dik> But I checked.  Rn will only check for new groups if the active
Dik> file is changed.  Next in the file addng.c we find the following
Dik> comment [deleted]:

And in a couple of more articles since then, Dik has further defended
that position on the basis that it works for him.  It does not,
however, work on many, many news systems out there.  Amos is quite
correct in is assertion that many people would be stuck wading through
a lot of "Not in .newsrc, add?" questions until they can read news.

Beyond that, there are the issues about people that _like_ to keep a
bunch of unsubscribed groups hanging around in their .newsrc, having
cross-posted articles marked appropriately, so they can get to it
later on.  I know some people who will read only, for example, soc.men
all week long and save soc.singles for the weekend.  Having the
appropriate articles marked as already read can save a lot of time and
effort for them.

Yes, I realize that the original solution to the problem of long
.newsrcs defeated this, too.  At least with the first method there
wasn't the harrassment of rn wanting to put groups back.

Dave
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