Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!pikes!udenva!wedgingt
From: wedgingt@udenva.cair.du.edu (Will Edgington)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: legal group names (was Re: Results of news.software.c newsgroup poll)
Message-ID: <11756@udenva.cair.du.edu>
Date: 31 May 89 20:35:11 GMT
References: <428@qtc.UUCP> <58@herron.uucp> <2341@xenna.Xylogics.COM>
Reply-To: wedgingt@nike.cair.du.edu.UUCP (Will Edgington)
Organization: Univ. of Denver, CO, USA
Lines: 41

In article <2341@xenna.Xylogics.COM> loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso) writes:
]In article <58@herron.uucp> jbrown@jato.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
]> MS-DOS will hiccup on this and several other names.
]> ....
]> I haven't decided how to handle comp.lang.c++ yet, but I'm assuming that
]> I'll have to handle it somehow.  I think it's unlikely that I'll be able
]> to talk people into significantly restricting the punctuation allowed.
]
]Newsgroup names shouldn't be bound in any way to the filename
]restrictions of various operating systems.  Just because some other
]"news" implementations uses such a scheme, doesn't mean that *all*
]news implementations need to do that, especially those news
]implementations on some so-called "operating systems" like that
]"M"-word above.
]
]Use a file of newsgroup-to-filename mappings that's used to map
]from a newsgroup name to a useable filename for the host operating
]system.

Guess what ?  If you and your feed(s) cooperate a bit on this,
you don't even have to write any new code.  The /usr/lib/aliases
file on MSDOS could look like :

comp.lang.c++			comp.lang.cplusplu
comp.lang.reallylongname	comp.lang.unique

... and your feed(s)'s /usr/lib/news/aliases like :

comp.lang.cplusplu		comp.lang.c++
comp.lang.unique		comp.lang.reallylongname

The moral: the news software is much more flexible than
most people think.
-- 
Will Edgington, Computing and Information Resources, University of Denver
System Administrator for udenva (== dueos), dutyche, duorion, dunike, ...
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