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From: rct@occrsh.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.notes
Subject: > 14-char newsgroup names
Message-ID: <3700001@occrsh.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jun-86 10:27:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: occrsh.3700001
Posted: Mon Jun 23 10:27:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jun-86 04:38:22 EDT
Lines: 53
Nf-ID: #N:occrsh.UUCP:3700001:000:2565
Nf-From: occrsh.UUCP!rct    Jun 23 09:27:00 1986


Concerning the lack of traffic in this group lately, perhaps that's
an indication of notes users' relative satisfaction with their software
as compared to news :-).

On a more serious note (boo...), a news user in another group recently
suggested that it shouldn't be too big a deal to handle newsgroup names
longer than 14-characters.  Technically, it isn't that big a deal when
the newsgroups aliasing feature of notes is used.  The problem is that
all the affected sites haven't gotten together on a standardized list
of aliases for such abominations as mod.computers.*.  As a result, I'm
still getting everything from the various subgroups of mod.computers.*
lumped together into a single notesfile.  Flaming at the die-hard news
community that they aren't conforming to the "unique-in-the-first-14-
characters" convention doesn't accomplish squat, because as far as they
are concerned, notes users are vermin that pollute their beloved newsgroups
with "Orphaned Response"s, and, anyway, they're conforming to the
14-character convention because EACH COMPONENT of the newsgroup name
is unique in the first 14 characters.  Well, gee...  That's great when
a site is running news 'cause the above example resides on disk as

	/usr/spool/news/
			mod/
			    computers/
				      category1
				      category2
				      etc.

or some such...

Bottom line:  are there any plans in the works to allow some future
release of the notes software to handle cases such as mod.computers.*
in a more graceful fashion?  I enjoy the notes interface for handling
articles very much, and will probably stay with it pending the results
of an evaluation of 2.11 news when it comes out this August.  Notes
won the last such evalution easily due to a much-superior user interface
and/or article presentation format.  (I say this knowing full well that
many changes have been made to the news software, particularly in the
user-interface programs.  That's why I'm willing to evaluate 2.11 news
when it's available.)

Flaming comments from news users will be cheerfully ignored.  Constructive
criticism directed towards a greater understanding of how news and notes
handle articles will do much for bridging the gap in a more transparent
manner.  Aww....  ok.  Flame if you wish.  If I can get you to discuss
the problem, whether in a rational fashion or not, then we're accomplishing
something.	:-)

--Bob Tracy	AT&T Network Systems	Oklahoma City
ihnp4!occrsh!rct

P.S.  Standard disclaimer about the above being my opinions and not
necessarily those of my employer hereby included.