Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tikal!hplsla!hpubvwa!fig!rsalz
From: rsalz@fig
Newsgroups: news.software.notes
Subject: Re: Evolutionary dead end?
Message-ID: <283@fig>
Date: 4 Jan 88 14:59:00 GMT
References: <107300003@datacube>
Lines: 28

James Zibro points out that news expire is an expensive operation.  I
disagree.  If I use the news article database, augmented with a
notes-style index file (in ASCII), then then "newsnotes" expire will be at
least as fast as that NYU or 1.7 notes -- scan through the index, build up
a queue or articles to unlink, then zap them all:  no expensive disk-disk
copying, and non of that silly close & compress nonsense.  Besides, this
runs at 4am; what do I care if it takes one hour or two?

Doing individual open calls for each article might be expensive, but I
don't care:  we're talking about an interactive program, with a human
reading the screen.  It will be more than fast enough.

Storing everything in a flat directory is a lose, both for efficiency in
finding notesfile directories, and for non-BSD filesystems:  comp.unix-wiza,
indeed!

Notes's access mechanism is a win.

The notes interface is great for local discussion groups; it is only
fair-to-middlin' when used on Usenet-wide groups.  It's biggest loss is
that it doesn't have anywhere near the active development community that
news does.  As a result, the Notesfile community spends lots of time
playing "catch-up":  moderated groups was relatively easy, but I'm still
waiting for heterogeneous NFS, kill files, and support of cross-posting,
checkgroups, and cancel messages.
	/r$
-- 
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