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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!steve
From: steve@nuchat.UUCP (Steve Nuchia)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: About all the used cars for sale in New Jersey ...
Message-ID: <372@nuchat.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Oct-87 10:08:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: nuchat.372
Posted: Mon Oct  5 10:08:56 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Oct-87 05:22:08 EDT
Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx
Lines: 22
Keywords: distribution, default
Xref: mnetor news.admin:1104 news.software.b:835

As I read through a stack of used car adds from New Jersey last night
a thought occurred to me:  There is a mechanism in place, at least
in the latest news software, for supplying a narrow default distribution.

For instance, articles for misc.test have a default distribution of 'local'.
Now, is the mechanism used for this general enough to be expanded to limit
misc.forsale items to some region around the poster?

I see one problem with this immediately: 'local' is an alias with a
useful definition everywhere and there is no corresponding 'regional'
distribution that will work.  To get around this problem the news
software would have to know yet another configuration parameter,
the 'regional distribution'.

Alternatively postnews could supply _no_ default distribution, forcing
the user to think about it.  Yet another alternative would be to somehow
designate, either by position or by some mark, one line from
LIBDIR/distributions as the regional default.
-- 
Steve Nuchia	    | [...] but the machine would probably be allowed no mercy.
uunet!nuchat!steve  | In other words then, if a machine is expected to be
(713) 334 6720	    | infallible, it cannot be intelligent.  - Alan Turing, 1947