Path: utzoo!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Just how useful is crossposting?
Message-ID: <49584@looking.on.ca>
Date: 18 Nov 89 17:53:39 GMT
References: <47326@looking.on.ca> <1604@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <48886@looking.on.ca> <14927@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 21
Class: discussion

In article <14927@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
>>Many other systems don't support links, so if you wish to support
>>crossposting you either have to a) waste disk space, or b) use another
>>file structure.
>
>Trivially untrue!?... if you're porting News over to some other system
>where "real" links aren't supported, just write a one-line file saying
>"-> Link to file ABCDEFG.123" and do the "link" yourself.  If this would
>waste too much disk space, you can have ONE file of "links" in each
>newsgroup storage area, and search that list for "linked" articles.

Creating a one line file (for example, under MS-DOS where that can take 4K)
comes under my definition of wasting disk space!   Even a 1K file
comes under that definition.

The best solution is probably a new file structure, where you simulate
unix directories to a small extent, with files of pointers to the actual
text.  (Or even files of message-ids, which are mapped to pointers to the
text.)
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473