Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob From: bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: Xrefs in vn (and elsewhere) Message-ID: Date: 27 Mar 89 13:57:46 GMT References: <115@intek01.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science Lines: 18 In-reply-to: mark@intek01.UUCP's message of 12 Mar 89 23:05:52 GMT In article <115@intek01.UUCP> mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes: I'm a vn user, and generally quite happy with it. I just wish it did cross-referencing, so i wouldn't see articles I've already read. ... Since cross-posted articles are just links to the same file, wouldn't just keeping a list of inodes found handle this? This is terribly un-general. What happens if you ever move your news spool area to a new filesystem, need to dump/newfs/restore your current one? (All the inodes will change, and you'll lose track.) What happens if you ever want to begin using NNTP? (inode information won't be available at all.) If you're going to go to the trouble to add cross-referencing, you may as well do it by the same mechanisms that the other, more modern newsreaders use. Don't intentionally tie yourself down with yet another newly-invented loss of generality!