Xref: utzoo news.admin:7199 news.software.b:3193 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!coolidge From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b Subject: Re: Lets see what versions of news people are running Summary: Another local change to C news... Message-ID: <1989Oct12.233424.28224@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> Date: 12 Oct 89 23:34:24 GMT References: <69987@uunet.UU.NET> <7397@xenna.Xylogics.COM> Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group Lines: 34 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out of date version!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 just changed our C news to report the patch date we're at (22-Aug-89, for the curious. 24-Aug didn't seem to add much, and I really don't want to rebuild history right now). Anyway, it would be nice for people to patch their version responder to say the right thing. 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. This may become more important as the number of pure-nntp systems (therefore not listed in the maps) grows. Yet another gripe about control messages: the granularity of control seems a little too low. If I send out a sendsys, I (almost without exception) mean to get just one particular machine. Posting to 'to.' works if it's a neighbor, and Distribution: helps a lot. But it seems like it should be possible to say 'sendsys ' and have only respond, while others propagate the message ignoring the sendsys otherwise. --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. You may redistribute this article if and only if your recipients may as well.