Newsgroups: comp.archives
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!emv
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: [news.software.b] Re: Cnews - A small assist for managing complex sys files
Message-ID: <1991Feb25.222158.18372@ox.com>
Followup-To: news.software.b
Sender: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
References: <1991Feb22.034319.9805@wolves.uucp> <1991Feb23.064618.6167@looking.on.ca> <1991Feb24.023410.5490@wolves.uucp> <1991Feb25.045851.1975@looking.on.ca>
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 1991 22:21:58 GMT
Approved: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)
X-Original-Newsgroups: news.software.b

Archive-name: news/transport/dynafeed/1991-02-25
Archive: uunet.uu.net:/ClariNet/dynafeed.tar.Z [137.39.1.2]
Original-posting-by: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Original-subject: Re: Cnews - A small assist for managing complex sys files
Reposted-by: emv@ox.com (Edward Vielmetti)

In article <1991Feb24.023410.5490@wolves.uucp> ggw%wolves@cs.duke.edu (Gregory G. Woodbury) writes:
>Brad,
>	I appreciate your eagerness to promote your software, but not
>all the world is on UNIX systems or on systems where they can simply
>plug in some package and hope it will "go", feeding gateways to other
>networks and systems other than fairly vanilla B- or C- news derived
>systems is not helped by dynafeed.
>
>If you can convince Waffle and FSUUCP and all the DOS-based newsreaders
>and news consumers to support the dynafeed messages, then I will look at
>it again.

Dynafeed uses a software tools approach, so it can indeed help those sites.
It consists of three parts:

a) A feeding program that takes a .newsrc and spits out news batches of
"unread" articles, either as true batches, or file lists AKA the "togo"
file of C news.   This part is dependent on the Bnews/Cnews (unix) news
directory structure, one article per file, etc.   But to be honest, that
could be changed pretty easily.   This is run on the *feed* site, so it
doesn't have to be ported to deal with DOS based *leaf* sites.

b) A "newsrc merging" program which takes a subscription request (I want
group X, or groups that match regulary expression R, etc.) and updates the
.newsrc file.  This one is not unix dependent at all, although it depends
on the fairly simple B/C "active" file and its format.   It is also only
run on the feed site.  It is optional, in that you can add and delete
newsgroups from the .newsrc file by hand with a text editor.

c) An arbitron like program that runs on the recipient site to generate
subscription requests to be emailed or uux'd to the merging program.
This is not unix dependent either.  It knows the .newsrc format, but could
be adapted really easily to understand other formats.   For subscription
purposes, all it really wants is to know what groups people subscribe to.
You could write a batch file to do this with just about any subscription
file in the world in 5 minutes -- gather up group names, and remove duplicates.
(2nd step optional.)

The only things that are unix dependent are the feed program's use of the
standard news database and active file, and its use of pipes to output
news batches directly, as well as the merging program and arbitron program's
use of the active file.   There are various shell scripts included to put
it all together, but they are just one example of ways to use the tools.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473


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