Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!akgua!gatech!seismo!mcvax!cernvax!cui!petitp From: petitp@cui.UUCP Newsgroups: net.news Subject: proposal/query for an improvement of the "rn" program Message-ID: <146@cui.UUCP> Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 20:08:35 EST Article-I.D.: cui.146 Posted: Thu Mar 6 20:08:35 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 08:37:23 EST Reply-To: petitp@cui.UUCP (PETITPIERRE Dominique) Organization: University of Geneva/Switzerland Lines: 37 Keywords: rn news archive Summary:Describes a problem to archive news articles,Proposal/Query of a solution I have the following problem: In our computer center the news articles are purged if they are older than 15 days. So if you want to keep interesting articles you are obliged to save them in your personal directories. When saving "rn" gives you the choice of two formats: normal or mailbox file. But both are not very practical when you have saved a large number of files: retrieval of a particular information becomes tedious. Only the name of a normal files helps you, or a fgrep like command. With "mail -f" it's no better since most of the time the "from" field is not interesting (besides it's very slow). And when articles are hierarchically stored in a big tree of directories, things become harder. The obvious tool to solve that problem, would be to use "rn" on a personal directory. It would fit perfectly since it is meant for that kind of access. BUT "rn" is not parametrisable for that purpose: the ~/News (%p) and /usr/spool/news (%P) and /usr/lib/news (%X) directory names are wired in the "rn" code. The problems would be to maintain a personal "active" file when saving to the personal directory (inews should be invoked) and to maintain a separate set of "dot files" (.newsrc etc) when consulting the saved articles. In that last case marking an article as read would loose signification, since you want to read it again and again. And the user should be able to cancel/delete his own saved articles. The way to change of environement i.e. to pass from public news consultation mode to personal archive consultation mode isn't clear to me but should be user friendly (without having to change environment variables all the time or to use different commands). Does such a feature exist? In that case I am sorry to clutter the net, but forgive me and tell me where I could find such a "rn". If it doesn't, has anybody had the same problems, and thought of an even better solution? Is anybody working on it? Dominique Petitpierre uucp: mcvax!cernvax!cui!petitp ISSCO, University of Geneva ean: petitp@cui.unige.chunet 54 route des acacias JANET: petitp%cui.unige.chunet@cs.ucl.ac.uk CH-1227 GENEVA (Switzerland) BITNET/EARN: petitp%cui.unige.chunet@CERNVAX Tel: 0041/22/20 93 33 ext 2117 CSNET/ARPA : petitp%cui.unige.chunet@ubc.csnet