Xref: utzoo news.admin:3138 news.groups:5005
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: Re: the return of comp.dcom.telecom ??
Message-ID: <22338@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 26 Jul 88 21:57:51 GMT
References: <440@vector.UUCP> <22336@tis.llnl.gov> <977@acornrc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 48

In article <977@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
> In article <22336@tis.llnl.gov>, mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch) writes:
> > Digests are
> > not amenable to newsreading software (yes, you can deal with them with
> > readnews or rn, but it ain't fun).  If TELECOM is to be gatewayed, it
> > should be done as *individual messages*
> 
> I beg to differ.  I find the 'm' command of vnews perfectly acceptible for
> dealing with digests.
> 
> Your comment is like saying television shows should not be broadcast in
> color because you have a black and white television set.

That is not a very good analogy.  I haven't used vnews in a few years,
since I find rn to be much more powerful (and I think much of the
community would agree).  All that vnews' "m" permitted, as I recall,
was the ability to treat a digest like a collection of messages *for
reading purposes only* (you can go to the next sub-message, etc.).

But with vnews can you: (1) SAVE individual digest messages, (2) REPLY
to the author of individual digest messages, (3) FOLLOWUP to an
individual digest message, ALL OF THESE in a completely compatible way
with other, non-digest-type Usenet articles, with all the headers
correct???  And with the message-ID of the responded-to article cited
correctly???

Another problem with digests is that since headers become
part of the body of the message, digestifiers remove "verbose" header
information that may be useful in identifying the origin of the
message, assisting with a reply to the author, keeping a thread
together, etc.  So even if a newsreader was theoretically perfect in
all of these tasks, the raw material may not be there anymore.

Vnews "m" may satisfy you, but I would prefer to be able to use the
full power of a tool like rn on ALL Usenet messages I read, including 
things gatewayed from Internet mailing lists. Gnews and other
newsreaders from the gnu/lisp/emacs community may solve some of these
problems but when the raw material's gone, there's no way to recover.

Characterizing digests as "color TV" and rn as a "black-and-white TV"
newsreader is a pretty silly analogy.  Digests LOSE information that
newsreading tools can make use of.  It might be more accurate to say 
that I am objecting to people broadcasting in black-and-white when the 
population already has color TVs, and color broadcasting systems are 
available for free. (Enough of that metaphor, I think.)

Michael C. Berch 
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / uunet!tis.llnl.gov!mcb / ames!lll-tis!mcb