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From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: C News readnews status ?
Message-ID: <1990Oct3.004953.9387@robobar.co.uk>
Date: 3 Oct 90 00:49:53 GMT
Sender: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo)
Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND.
Lines: 64

A question for the C News authors:

Could you say what you consider to be the future of the included
newsreader ?  You don't seem to have abandoned it completely seeing
that it actually has been patched since the release :-)

Presumably it has already diverged sufficiently from the UNSW news package
that backwards compatibility with UNSW is no longer of major concern?

As it stands, it seems to be useable, but incomplete.  I think I'd
like to see a few features REMOVED from it (like -u -- this will shrink
it a LOT :-) but made useable as a complete newsreading system.

The stated main problem (lack of pure USG support) doesn't *seem* to be a
problem -- (though I haven't tested it on a pure USG yet but I will)
it works _almost_ perfectly if you stick the sgttyb declaration into the
#ifdef and compile WITHOUT any terminal ioctls at all -- I actually
prefer it this way -- leaves no chance of screwing up the tty settings :-)
(it's slightly better if you remove the manual echoing code in this case)

The unresolved issues which bother me currently are:

	1) readnews expects postnews to handle some weird arguments for
	   followups (which it doesn't :-).

	   If these arguments are going to stay put, there's a case for
	   teaching the shell script postnews (and also rn's Pnews maybe)
	   to understand at least what readnews spews out.

	2) The mail reply addresses are total rubbish. 
	   I'd like to see its logic conformant with newsreply's.

	   Really, a proper mail reply system related to postnews is
	   needed, although this requires the mail equivalent of inews -h
	   which some systems may not have :-( (I use mush -h)

	3) cancellation (if postnews worked :-) is a bit abrupt and
	   permissive :-)

	4) The 'p'ost command shouldn't really issue an "include this
	   article" request to postnews should it ? 

	5) reading the .newsrc isn't done with fgetmfs :-(

At some stage I'd like to hack 1-4 of the above into my own copy, (5) is
really necessary, but is also a VERY major hack.

I'd like to know if a) anyone else has done it b) whether anyone else is
GOING to do it c) what the C News authors would like to happen d) what
others would like to see happen.  I bet most of you never ever compiled it
though :-)

Before Henry chips in, (:-) I'd like to remind every one else that my
purpose is purely to make it work, add NOTHING that is not ABSOLUTELY
required for it to completely work.  (I'd say that bits that can't be
made to work in a simple manner should be REMOVED!)  If you want more
features, you know where to find the source to "nn" :-)

Now, who's first to point out where I've gone wrong and completely
missed where all this stuff is ? :-)
-- 
   ronald@robobar.co.uk | +44 81 991 1142 (O) | +44 71 229 7741 (H) | YELL!
   "Nothing sucks like a VAX"   --   confirmed after recent radiator burst!
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