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From: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.notes
Subject: Re: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <2299@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 11:55:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2299
Posted: Fri Aug 30 11:55:12 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Sep-85 05:32:07 EDT
References: <10220@ucbvax.ARPA> <1067@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 26
Xref: watmath net.news:3875 net.notes:255
Summary: 

In article <1067@sdcsvax.UUCP> jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West) writes:
>I agree.  What about digests that get forwarded pre-digested,
>like fa.info-mac?  Do we leave as is, undigest it at cross
>posting, or bite the bullet and add the appropriate digest-reading
>logic to vnews and readnews?

If you have lots of users, the best place to undigestify articles is in
inews/rnews, so that you only do the work once instead of 50 times, and
you do it at night instead of in the daytime, and you do it when nobody is
sitting at the terminal tapping their fingers and wondering if they should
go get some tea.

The only disadvantage that I can see is if you are tight for disk space,
you'd rather have 1 file than n files.  (Hmm, maybe inews needs to
transmogrify a digest into an archive, and then make n copies of it using
links.  Then anybody who wants to open an article has to check to see if
it's an archive, and zero in on that part of the archive containing the
article desired.  Yech.  How about just making undigestification optional?)

I've also been asked to make rn sort articles into chronological order, and
have refused for the same reason--I think it should be done by inews.

I guess I'm turning into an opinionated old man. 

Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall