Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!henry.jpl.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: rn/rrn patchlevels, etc.
Message-ID: <6246@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 15 Oct 89 10:32:25 GMT
References: <47.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> <54.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> <10049@ucsd.Edu>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 36

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.

Well, sort of.  It actually grew out of trying to do distributed configuration
management using the news system.  I needed something to navigate around
the articles and print out reports, and awk wasn't up to it, so...

But 'tis true the new one will be prototyped in perl, at least.

And 'tis also true that I'm not working on the old rn any more.  People told
me that the innards were too, um, "intricate", and they were right.  Rn is
a trifle organic.  (But then again, so's your brain!)

: My guess is when/if this new newsreader is available, it'll blow all
: the others out of the water.

I guess I can fool some of the people all of the time...  :-)

: 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.

Let's say it's been kicked out of the house.  But the dirty laundry keeps
coming back.

: I suspect that if you were to publish bugfixes in comp.sources.bugs, or
: put them out somewhere for FTP retrieval, people would be grateful.  But
: I doubt you'll ever see any more official patches for 'rn'.

I suspect you're right.

Larry Wall
lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov