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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!wmartin
From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Do not skip duplicates -- a different view
Message-ID: <3062@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 26-Jun-84 09:12:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.3062
Posted: Tue Jun 26 09:12:55 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 30-Jun-84 01:00:52 EDT
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 45

Every few weeks, a netnews reader will post a gripe/request that the
readnews software be made more intelligent and aware of which of the
postings that went to multiple groups have been seen (or "n"'d) in
previous "readnews" sessions. Currently, the software knows only
about those postings which have been viewed in the same readnews
session. I've seen enough of these requests that I have come to assume
that this software change is so widely desired that it is almost
inevitable that a future release will include it.

I don't want such a change. It would cause trouble. So I think I had
better make some reasons against it public, so anyone writing 
news software will know this is not a universal desire.

I view different newsgroups in different fashions. Perhaps few other
readers do this, but I cannot believe that I am unique. I pass the
contents of some newsgroups on to other people in printed form. To
do this, I access some groups by specifying the group name and the
"-p" option, direct the output to a file, and then dump that file to 
a printer for one or more copies. Some of these groups overlap, such
as net.audio and net.music.classical. If the software remembered that
I had see posting "x" when pulling all the new net.audio messages, and 
therefore skipped the other copy of posting "x" which was sent to
net.music.classical when I try to retrieve all new postings from
that group, it would cause me untold bother and trouble to compare
the two outputs and locate and specially print the skipped messages.

Another situation: I sometimes will deliberately "n" across a posting
where the header states it went to several newsgroups, if I would
prefer to read that posting in the context of another group. I rely
upon the current software's lack of memory across different sessions,
so that the same posting will be presented to me again when I am
accessing the other newsgroup. (I often look at one or several groups
by using the "-n" option, instead of the entire mess in system-determined
sequence.)

Rather than extend this further, I just want to emphasize that the
current lack of memory is truly a feature, not a bug. I would think that
implementing more detailed recollection in readnews would force large
amounts of data to be stored in .newsrc or another file for each user,
an undesirable effect. Therefore, I ask any maintainers/creators of
this software to keep in mind the diversity of needs and approaches
netnews readers bring with them when running readnews, and not to
make "improvements" which will have unforseen negative impacts.

Will Martin