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From: guido@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <6612@boring.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 1-Sep-85 23:15:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: boring.6612
Posted: Sun Sep  1 23:15:16 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 09:36:42 EDT
References: <10220@ucbvax.ARPA> <764@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum)
Organization: "Stamp Out BASIC" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 25
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

I use rn, I know about ^G and G, and I still don't like digests.  The main
problem is at 1200 baud (or lower).  Using rn's '=' command I can (and
routinely do) scan the headers of all articles on undigestified groups and
skip those I don't like (indeed I often skip everything), just as quick as
Lauren does with digests.

But when I use ^G or G in rn, it insists on displaying the whole page, while
normally at the beginning of an article it only shows a few header lines and
one or two contents lines.  When I want to go directly to the n'th message in
a digest, I have to use g and type a large fragment of its subject.

Together, these habits of rn make it more painful for me to read digests than
to read normal groups.  I understand moderators' attempts at reducing the net
traffic, but moderated groups are already low volume, high content groups, so
even undigestified they don't contribute much to net pollution.  Grouping
several articles with the same subject line together in a digest is fine for
me.

Someone is surely going to suggest to add some more quirks to rn's
undigestifying code.  Wrong.  Rn has very general capabilities to treat
articles and groups of articles, and it would need duplication of all these
features for digests.  And don't tell me to go back to readnews.

--
	Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam (guido@mcvax.UUCP)