Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watnot!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-unix!hplabs!sdcrdcf!lwall From: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: Public Domain Netnews... Message-ID: <4186@sdcrdcf.UUCP> Date: Mon, 23-Feb-87 18:35:26 EST Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.4186 Posted: Mon Feb 23 18:35:26 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 26-Feb-87 22:34:56 EST References: <1312@hplabsc.UUCP> <4169@sdcrdcf.UUCP> <1320@hplabsc.UUCP> <806@fmsrl7.UUCP> Reply-To: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) Distribution: world Organization: Unisys - System Development Group, Santa Monica Lines: 79 In article <806@fmsrl7.UUCP> wayne@fmsrl7.UUCP (Michael R. Wayne) writes: > All this discussion about public domain news made me think of a few >things I would LOVE to see in future releases. These include: > > 1) A way to store the news in compressed form where rn (or whatever) >would uncompress on the fly for display purposes. This would help a LOT for >those of us with limited disk space. The next version of rn will have support for multiple virtual article "protocols", such as NNTP, mail, etc. There's no reason you couldn't set up a protocol that just does a popen("compress -d... instead of a normal open. Of course, if you add all the protocols, rn will probably exceed your address space. :-) > ...Also, for smaller machines that >forward news, it would be less CPU time (decompress-store-compress-send >turns into store-send) But only if you compress articles one at a time. Most news is compressed a batch at a time. > 2) A means to use your own pager with rn. It gets real tiring to >hit u (as in less) to back up and suddenly realize you just unsubscribed to >the silly group. Also, my machine doesn't trap ^B, it core dumps. This is not likely to happen, if for no other reason than that the original reason I wrote rn was to get away from starting up a process on every article. My sentiments are that if you want that, you want readnews. On the other hand, I'm sort of a reasonable guy, so I'll throw out an idea that might or might not be what you want. Set -i=1 and any -h switches so you get a minimal header. Define yourself a macro that works something like this: \040 %(%m!=[p]? :!%{PAGER} %A^Jj) That is, if you hit space in pager mode, invoke your pager on the article and then junk the article. If you wanted to strip the header off the front, you'd either have to hack a % interplation into intrp.c that returned the number of header lines, or use the %B value that gives the header size in bytes, perhaps with the tail program. Note that the speed of the ! command is sensitive to the value of SHELL. Note also that the article will be junked every time you exit the pager, and you'll have to exit the pager before typing commands like 'r' and 'f'. If you don't want to go that far, you can at least disable the u command at the pager level with a macro, or ask for confirmation. If your machine core dumps when you type ^B because it just doesn't like ^Bs, there's nothing I can do about that. If, however, it dumps because rn isn't handling backpage right on your machine, I'd like to know why. You can disable the ^B as well if it causes you grief. On a brighter note, you'll be able to implement things like back half a page in the next rn because I'm going to put in a way to temporarily suppress output within a macro. > 3) An automated mechanism for expire. Something that detected that >no-one on the machine reads a given group so expire it in days. Not my jurisdiction. I try to stay away from matters expirational. > 4) More user control. I keep seeing messages like "I can't do xxx >and my system adminstrator won't help me". Having been in both positions, I haven't the foggiest idea how to do this with both equity and security. > As far as copyright notices, would it be better to license the >software? Something like: ... I don't see how this would accomplish anything other than filling up my already full mailbox. If a copyright doesn't scare the ratfinks, I doubt that an easily forged and easily lost license agreement will do any better. And the people who are unhappy about the copyright will probably be unhappier about the license. Larry Wall {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall