Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!ficc!karl
From: karl@ficc.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: rn/rrn patchlevels, etc.
Message-ID: <6514@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 12 Oct 89 01:04:16 GMT
References: <47.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> <54.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> <10049@ucsd.Edu>
Reply-To: karl@ficc.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer)
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 34

In article <10049@ucsd.Edu> brian@ucsd.edu (Brian Kantor) writes:
>The author of 'rn', Larry Wall, has publicly stated that he isn't going
>to do any more work on 'rn'.  Rather, he is (in his limited free time)
>in the process of writing a new news reader.  Perl grew out of that effort.

>In the meantime, I know of no one collecting patches or taking
>maintenance responsibility for 'rn'.  It is essentially a mature
>product with a few minor bugs.  Or maybe you can consider it an orphan,
>if that makes you feel better.

rn is showing its age a bit.  PL40 came out years ago.  If there is a patch 41,
somebody please mail it to me.

I have been doing a bit of hacking on rn, myself.  For example, sitenames
are hardcoded to tag a .UUCP on the end, which is definitely wrong.
Also, the Configure stuff screws up on Sys V/386 because it thinks it
understands that readdir() is there but it isn't actually compatible.
The method rn uses for backtracking to determine the current directory
doesn't work properly by default if you're over a network like OpenNET
where this is a sort of node prequalifier.
Finally, if your uname or hostname gives a wrong answer, rn will use them
even if you tell it not to (and it may not always ask, either).
(Oh yeah, some minor things, too, like Pnews doesn't know about alt groups,
 so it doesn't have something quite pithy enough to say about them when
 you're trying to post to alt, like it does for 'most everything else.)

Is anyone else working on rn?  I would like to coordinate updates with them
if so.

I would be willing to produce a new patch for rn.  Would anybody use it?
Should I try to get lwall's blessing, or what?
-- 
-- uunet!ficc!karl	"The last thing one knows in constructing a work 
			 is what to put first."  -- Pascal