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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Lets see what versions of news people are running
Message-ID: <1989Oct13.212209.7537@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <69987@uunet.UU.NET> <7397@xenna.Xylogics.COM> <1989Oct12.233424.28224@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 89 21:22:09 GMT

loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso) writes:
>>For C news, 
>>a system tracked by patch dates, you get no other information than
>>the single character "C".  While its a valiant effort for Geoff &
>>Henry to want only "one C news", there are (now) different `versions'
>>in use in the field, and it would be nice to know who's got an
>>out of date version!

I am (reluctantly) coming to agree that patch date in the version output
would be a useful thing.  We'd really be much happier with code that just
came out with either "current" or "out of date", but there isn't any way
to do that without other complications.

In article <1989Oct12.233424.28224@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
>... A better question is: what sorts of information
>should version give? Just the news version? News and nntp version? How
>about a 'system' control that returns the system type, news and nntp
>version, system name, and contact info...

Interesting point.  Anybody else have any thoughts on this?  C News can
include anything that is readily found by a Unix command, since the code
that actually builds the version message is a shell file.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu