Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!bellcore!uunet!sparky!kent From: kent@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM (Kent Landfield) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: v16INF1: Introduction to comp.sources.misc Message-ID: <1991Jan7.064842.4337@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> Date: 7 Jan 91 06:48:42 GMT References: <1991Jan3.063119.4373@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> <1991Jan4.014843.1298@wolves.uucp> <1991Jan5.015342.19460@NCoast.ORG> Organization: Sterling Software, Bellevue, NE. Lines: 78 In article <1991Jan4.014843.1298@wolves.uucp> by ggw%wolves@cs.duke.edu (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes: > In article <1991Jan3.063119.4373@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> > kent@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM (Kent Landfield) writes: > >Posting-number: Volume 16, Info 1 > >Archive-name: intro16 ^^^^^^^^^^ and here is the nit! > All the other postings "Archive-Name:" headers are of the form > directory/part > EXCEPT FOR THESE DARN INTROS! > This needlessly complicates the scripts used to stash articles for > archiving. Additionally, it clutters up the top level of the archive > directory until someone goes in and cleans it up by hand. In article <1991Jan5.015342.19460@NCoast.ORG> allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR) writes: # My version would have been volume16/v16welcome, followed by # volume16/v16index/part01 ... part04. # However, the person you're complaining about may know more about archiving # than anyone else on the net. Let's not go overboard here.. :-) :-) Greg brings up a problem and I was the cause of it. Brandon placed the indexes in subdirectories very nicely. Greg's archiving scripts were apparently caught off guard when I changed where comp.sources.misc placed the initial INFormational postings. To all the sites that may have been caught by this, sorry. Greg's nit was directed towards the *initial* INF postings but the problem will exist for all INF postings. Say I post a notice of a new archive site prior to a new volume's INF postings. Where do I put that ? If archivers were caught off guard with the initial INF posting, they are also going to have trouble when I post other INFormational posting during the course of the volume's postings. *WARNING Will Robinson*.. :-) While developing rkive I researched each comp.sources newsgroup archives to examine how the moderators were utilizing the Archive-name: auxiliary header. For most source groups, the INF postings have been placed in the top level of the volumes's archive directory with source posting located in subdirectories from there (at least in the later volumes :-) ). To this point, comp.sources.misc was an exception. Greg writes: > I would like to suggest that the volume introductions and informational > postings all get assigned a directory of "volNNN/xxxxxx" where the > xxxxx becomes something like "intro1", "intro2", index01, index02... > and the info postings get info.01, etc.... OK, a standard naming convention for the directory that stores the INF postings based on volume, but don't we already have that ? This type of usage takes these files out of the volume's base directory but it clouds the separation between source and INF postings. When source gets put in subdirectories and *only* INF postings are placed directly in the volume directory, there is a clean and visible separation. I too have viewed the base directory of each volume as the place where the moderators should store the postings that are non-source related and only informational in scope. In this manner, a user is able to immediately locate all INFormational postings for a volume without having to search through (or cd to) subdirectories to find or read them. This was the rationale for the recent change in comp.sources.misc. A secondary consideration was an attempt to standardize the location where all INF postings would reside so that c.s.m need not be an exception. Greg writes: > Or am I totally missing out on "the official way to archive" these > postings? The part of the INF posting in most source groups describing the format and use the Archive-name: auxiliary header line does not deal with INF postings. The description makes it sound like *all* posted articles will be placed in a subdirectory somewhere under the volume directory even though that has not been the practice except in c.s.m. I will correct this in the next volume's initial INF postings. Worst case Greg, you could always try rkive... :-) (Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)) -Kent+ -- Kent Landfield INTERNET: kent@sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM Sterling Software, IMD UUCP: uunet!sparky!kent Phone: (402) 291-8300 FAX: (402) 291-4362 Please send comp.sources.misc-related mail to kent@uunet.uu.net.