Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!plains!overby From: overby@plains.UUCP (Glen Overby) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Source Posting Proposal (was Re: estdio.taz & fp.tar.Z on ftp.adelaide.edu.au) Summary: How to make things easier for archive sites and other people. Keywords: help, sanity, an idea Message-ID: <5389@plains.UUCP> Date: 3 Aug 90 03:26:45 GMT References: <1265@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Organization: Silo Tech, Fargo ND USA where cold is a relative term. Lines: 40 In article <1265@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> cagney@cs.adelaide.edu.au (Andrew Cagney - aka Noid) writes: >The'll [FP package] be automatically ftp'd to plains.nodak.edu (USA) shortly. they have been (ah, it's so nice to have daemons to do my work for me). >Glen (Overby), do you already have the fp (floating point) stuff on >plains.nodak? Its not really an `Australian' product. This is an organization question. As it happens, I do not have a copy of that particular package on Plains. I have found it difficult to organize things posted to comp.os.minix, because it is not always obvious what runs on what machines (and this situation is going to get worse when we get Mac and Amiga people on!). So far, I've attempted to stuff most things in the "all.contrib" for apparently portable programs, "pc.contrib" for things related to Intel brain-dammage, and "st-contrib" for things related to the Space-Invaders company's machines. I'd like to propose a posting standard. Namely, that used by many other Usenet groups (most of which are moderated). These groups add a couple lines at the beginning of the posting containing, for example: X-Checksum-Snefru: e80a5aa3 4d17bf71 233d6222 ad37b7d8 Submitted-by: "Glen Overby" Posting-number: Volume 22, Issue 112 Archive-name: {pc,st,mac,amiga,68K,8086}/some_name/part01 The "snefru" program is some checsum program that Rich $alz uses on Comp.sources.unix; maybe we shouldn't bother with it. The Posting-number line is inappropriate since this group isn't moderated and sequenced. The important two lines are the "Submitted-by:" and "Archive-name:" lines. If would put a {machine/cpu-name}/program-name/part-number on the "Archive-name:" line, people who use and save this stuff can use a program such as "rkive" to save the articles in an appropriate place. I know I'm probably just blowing a lot of hot air; 10% of the people posting to the group will take my suggestion and that few won't make much difference. -- Glen Overby uunet!plains!overby (UUCP) overby@plains (Bitnet)