Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list From: JOHNSON@NORTHEASTERN.EDU (I am only an egg.) Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news Subject: v5.9c Message-ID: Date: 5 Jan 90 15:54:00 GMT Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion Reply-To: "I am only an egg." Lines: 36 X-VMS-To: IN%"anu-news@vm1.nodak.edu" Hi all! Happy New Year! I FTP'ed 5.9c from the source Goeff mentioned. It built well and seems to running fine. The few bugs some have found haven't bitten me yet. I noticed that a problem I had in 5.8x has gone away. I used to get temp files left behind in my SYS$SYSTEM: directory. There was a delete(fp) in the code but it never worked for some reason. I noticed the NNTP_ACCESS now uses real node names too. I noticed that the name of the incoming nntp batch files changed. This causes more reponses to come before original messages. It's not a problem for me but it may be for some. Naming the file something like NNTP_yymmddhhmmss_pid.BATCH or some such might help solve it. It seems to be faster by a bit. The only problem I have with speed is getting the loading to keep up with the incoming news :-). As to version control: I realize that this will go over like a lead balloon with some but I have this thing against patching. I much prefer getting whole complete stuff. I still remember the days when we hex patched IBM images :-(. (I still have to do it with DEC images. Computing for the 50's ... YUCK! :-() This put me off patching for ever and ever. That's why I waited until there was an FTP'able whole version someplace. It made my day when Goeff announced it. Of course I understand that not everybody has FTP access but NEWS isn't really that big. It or updated pieces could probably be e-mailed to a few key sites for further distribution if necessary. The load would be distributed then. (And I don't think I could justify paying for it either. People want NEWS but no one is willing to shell out the bucks for it. *sigh*) Chris Johnson Northeasern University