Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Apology for repostings in alt - 2 C News bugs
Message-ID: <1990Sep27.173843.2745@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Sep24.220833.230@vicom.com> <1990Sep25.153457.2612@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Sep25.210842.9@vicom.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 90 17:38:43 GMT

In article <1990Sep25.210842.9@vicom.com> lmb@vicom.com (Larry Blair) writes:
>=I don't think it has ever been clear what the semantics are supposed to be
>=if the same header crops up in both inews options and the article itself.
>
>The decision about what to do when a directive appears as both a command line
>option and in the file being acted upon is not ambiguous.  Unix, as defined
>by its many utilities, has a clear direction: command line options take
>precedence...
>
>You have made it clear innumerable times that you feel that inews and other
>2.11 programs are silly.  Why, then, did you implement look-alikes?  I
>suspect it was to make life easier on people making the transition.

No, sorry, you have misunderstood badly.  We implemented lookalikes because
these are part of the *user interface*, and zillions of things would break
if we changed that.  That does not alter our very low opinion of a lot of
the silly, frivolous features that those programs have acquired over time.

That being the case, the relevant question is *not* what the "clear
direction of Unix" is, but what the existing behavior is.  The B News
documentation simply does not address the point at all, which can be
taken to imply either (a) that no specific behavior is guaranteed, or
(b) that this was an oversight in the documentation.  In case (a), we're
in the clear.  In case (b), it's not clear how to proceed, because it
is hard to sort out the implementation accidents from the deliberate
decisions if you read the code or experiment with it... and we really
don't have time for either.  If someone would care to find out (not
"speculate"; "find out"!) what 2.11 does, we would be interested.
(Not "committed to doing the same", mind you, just "interested".)

Incidentally, it is unwise to rely on undocumented features.

>As to whether one should use the command line option or not: you can't be
>serious about your argument.  Do you really think that it would have been
>just as easy to have modified the 400 articles that were being locally
>reposted as it was to stick `-d local' on the command line?

Just about, since presumably you did not type "inews -d local ..." 400
times by hand, and you would not do the modifications by hand either.
Awk is a very useful program.


All of this leaves aside what I'm inclined to consider the real question
here:  what is the *most useful* behavior?  That depends on what you're
trying to do with -d.  There are about three plausible approaches, given
that -d ought to do *something*:

1. -d supplies a default distribution, used only if there is none in
	the article.  This is roughly the effect C News gets now, by
	accident I think.

2. -d overrides any distribution in the article.  This would be the most
	useful approach in Larry's position when using his solution -- not
	obviously the best solution to his problem, by the way, but not
	a ridiculous one either -- but may not be right for others.

3. Presence of both -d and a distribution is an error.  This is probably
	the right solution if you think of inews as primarily a human
	interface.

Contributions from others who have run into this issue would be welcome.
-- 
TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
OSI: handling yesterday's loads someday|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry