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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!apollo!nazgul
From: nazgul@apollo.uucp (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Why digests are bad
Message-ID: <29769fdc.8e4@apollo.uucp>
Date: Fri, 11-Oct-85 10:58:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.29769fdc.8e4
Posted: Fri Oct 11 10:58:56 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 20:49:34 EDT
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 37

...
>In article <192@peregrine.UUCP> mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:
>>
>>The people that like digests seem to like them because they are easily
>>printed.  Why couldn't somebody that likes printing out articles create
>>a program that would take a news group, a set of related articles(same
>>subject or parent chaining) and create one article suitable for printing.
>>This way people who are ready the articles on line can take advantage of
>>there news software without have them hacked apart to understand digests.
>
>I do this now by saving the articles (with rn s command) then just printing
>the file. It works just fine.
>

So long as any news program lets you batch stuff (like readnews) doing your
own 'digests' is no problem.  I have a bizzare hacked together collection
of scripts that runs every night and collects news groups, nroffs them,
creates a table of contents and permuted index and dumps them to the printer.
Then I can read them at my leisure.  (This also leads to bizzare statistics
like:  net.sf-lovers once spent 60 pages discussing the tv show 'V'!!!!?)

                                                -nazgul

                                    ...decvax!wanginst!apollo!nazgul


        The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat,
        side by side in the armory sat.
        Nobody thought of fusion or fission,
        everyone spoke of their peacetime mission.
        Till somebody came and opened the door
        and they they were in in a neutron fog;
        the Codrogen Cat and the Hybalt Dog.
        They mushroomed up with a terrible roar,
        and nobody, never, was there no more.
        
                            "The Space Childs Mother Goose"