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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!seismo!munnari!kre
From: kre@munnari.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: RN wishlist
Message-ID: <1568@munnari.oz>
Date: Sat, 18-Apr-87 08:04:03 EST
Article-I.D.: munnari.1568
Posted: Sat Apr 18 08:04:03 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 01:56:53 EST
References: <862@chinet.UUCP> <522@omen.UUCP> <18445@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Comp Sci, Melbourne Uni, Australia
Lines: 37

In article <18445@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU
(Erik E. Fair) writes:
> The proper way to handle digests is not to have them at all.

Nonsense.

> They break all the netnews readers we have.

That's a problem with the news readers, readnews does a fairly
good job of handling them.  The others could.

> They also usually
> have incorrect, or unusable return addresses in them, useful only to
> the mailer at the site that constructed the digest in the first place.

This is a totally specious argument.  The From: address in any usenet
article is constructed at the initiating site, and is no more likely
to be correct or incorrect at any particular reader's site than the
From: address in a digest.  I know that Erik isn't seriously proposing
that the Path: header in usenet articles is relevant to this.

> Digests are a form of message batching that the USENET has never needed,

If you view a digest as being solely a transport hack then I agree.
(Though "never" is a bit much, usenet didn't always have batching).
And indeed, some digests are no more than that .. when Erik got the
moderator of the Telecom digest to send the raw data instead of
the digested form I didn't mind at all, that digest had no advantages.

However, other digests are much more than the sum of their articles,
when AI-LIST started being sent to usenet undigested I unsubscribed
within a day or two, before then I had at least glanced at each issue.

I would hate to see RISKS or a few of the others split, SUN-SPOTS
and a bunch of others like that I wouldn't mind at all.

kre