Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!texbell!chinacat!chip
From: chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Undigestifiers Considered Harmful
Message-ID: <819@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG>
Date: 29 Dec 89 16:04:51 GMT
References: <15037@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Reply-To: chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal)
Organization: Unicom Systems Development, Dallas
Lines: 50

In article <15037@bfmny0.UU.NET> tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:
>Chip Rosenthal recently posted an 'undigestifier' to comp.sources.misc [...]
>I know Chip means well, and that under appropriately rigid control this
>can be a useful tool.  But the overall effect on the net is pernicious,
>because *DISTRIBUTION* of the broken-up digest articles is left up to
>the discretion of each undigestifying site.

I'll cede this point and possibly I didn't consider it strongly enough
when posting, but I don't think the problem is quite as extreme as suggested.
I'll mention why not in a moment, but right at the start I'll say that the
workaround would be to place the line:

    HDR_ADD	Distribution	local

in the definitions file (or use a newsgroup which is only distributed locally).

Realistically, if somebody should install this thing, say on comp.risks,
and direct postings to the net, I don't think there will be a major meltdown.
First off, "brkdig" is pretty picky about checking the digest format, and
dying with complaints when discrepancies are found.  So you wouldn't run
into a situation where, for example, two sites were bouncing each others
postings back into the net.  Worst case, I expect that isolated sites
will occasionally munch up and spit out a digest.  This will probably
happen only once, due to the usually efficiency of flame generation on
the net!

Second, I think the configuration file, a readable text file, is simple
enough such that drastic mistakes which cause this sort of problem will
be reduced.

Finally, I don't know if the risk from "brkdig" is nearly as great as
some of the other things out there which hiccup from time to time.  Most
notable are some of the gateways such as notes->usenet and fido->usenet.
There things become aggravating from time to time, but they haven't brought
the net to it's knees.  At least with "brkdig", you still have accountability
because it goes through inews and there provides a "Sender" line.

I don't follow rec.photo, so I don't know about the incident there.  I'm
not sure if such a problem would be created by "brkdig".  I would tend to
think not.  The offending sysadmin would be innundated with messages like:

    couldn't locate end of digest header
      ABORTING - please process digest manually

from all of the non-digest messages.  It's hard to forget that such a
thing is there.

I think "brkdig" is a useful tool.  I'm not sorry I posted it.  But in
retrospect, maybe a word of caution and a safer example configuration
might have been warranted.