Path: utzoo!hoptoad!uunet!littlei!zeus!sdp
From: sdp@zeus.hf.intel.com (Scott Peterson)
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext
Subject: Re: Does this group really exist
Message-ID: <202@zeus.hf.intel.com>
Date: 30 Jan 88 00:36:59 GMT
References: <3468@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <757@brandx.rutgers.edu> <870@cos.COM> <775@brandx.rutgers.edu>
Reply-To: sdp@sdp.hf.intel.com (Scott Peterson)
Organization: OMSO iRMX Software Engineering - Intel Corp. - Hillsboro Or.
Lines: 38

In article <775@brandx.rutgers.edu> webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) writes:
> [ ... ]
>The connection of articles in news is unclear (the links established
>by the default news software are generally bogus due to the fact that
>so few users actually have software that lets them use these links
>effectively that they don't bother maintaining them).  At 2.5 meg a day,
>a hypertexted version of usenet is a bit large to post into this group for
>discussion.  While these issues are fun to contemplate, I think something
>more restricted is actually capable of implementation and experimentation.
> [ ... ]

Converting the format of news to support links is clearly not the solution
then.  Last I heard, the people at MCC opted for links maintained external
to the text files in their PlaneText system.  I think they did it so you
could link to source code.  This must make version control a little
difficult (edit the file too extensively, and the system can't figure out
from context where the links are supposed to point).

One option is to put out links in the header.  In links could be added to
the header by a utility run after news was unbatched.  The news reader
(presumably we'd need a new news reader anyway) would have to be smart
enough to sense when new in links had been added to already-read articles.
New in links to dead articles would have to be tossed, I guess (not so bad
really - if news volume could be reduced by using links instead of quoting
news wouldn't have to be expired so soon).

In my humble opinion, adding links to netnews is not that difficult (there
should be a big 'theoretically' in there somewhere).  That is, when you
compare it to the task of adding links to email, and other private
documents.  News articles are already serialized, and they can't be edited.

Scott Peterson
OMSO Software Engineering
Intel,  Hillsboro OR
sdp@sdp.hf.intel.com
uunet!littlei!foobar!sdp!sdp

Can you run fsck on your brain?