Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!dkuug!tidk!storm
From: storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: New .newsrc format [was Dynamic "smart" expiration?]
Message-ID: <433@texas.dk>
Date: 4 Jan 90 16:57:59 GMT
References: <69903@looking.on.ca>
Sender: news@slyrf.dkuug.dk
Organization: Texas Instruments, Denmark
Lines: 70

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:

>Perhaps something simple like:

>groupname[:!] [fieldname=data;]*

>with fields delimited by something like colons or semicolons, and the
>default field (ie anything starting with a digit) is the 'seen articles list'
>-- thus degenerating to the current format.   Leave : and ! as the delim
>after the group name, but add extra fields for other kinds of subscription.

Further requirements:

Specify that the order of fields is arbitrary.

Require that a news reader MUST preserve the fields it does not
understand itself!

Why not just require that the list of read articles should be first on
the line? Allowing boolean fields as well, we could have the format:

	groupname[:!] [list][;fieldname[=data]]*

Maybe we need a clearing house for field names, or the RFC could
contain a list of reserved names?

Then I would like to reserve the following fields:

select=list
	List of selected articles (for nn's "save selections between
	invocations" feature).

new (boolean)
	If present, the user has never seen the group, because all
	articles in the group sofar has been cross-postings read in
	other groups.  (In nn you are not presented with a new group
	until there is actually something posted to it, but it still
	has to mark cross-posted articles in the group as read until
	that happens).

In general I want as little manual editing of .newsrc as possible (to
avoid the risk of a novice user destroying it), and in particular 
the individual setup of each news reader should not be done in
.newsrc, i.e. it should not be burdened with news reader specific
data such as kill-information, macros, and the like.

A rather severe problem I have encountered recently (when converting
nn to use .newsrc instead of its own rc file), is that rn (IMHO) uses
an unpleasant hack to keep track of unsubscribed groups which does not
occur in .newsrc:

It keeps a time-stamp and a seek offset in the active file in a
separate file.  This works just fine until the day where somebody
choses to rebuild the active file (or just sorts it) [the consequences
of this is left as an excercise to the reader :-].  It also makes
simlutaneous use of rn and other news readers problematic if they
don't know about rn's hack.  For example, nn will treat the missing
groups as new groups (with default subscription), and add them to
.newsrc.

If we starts changing the .newsrc file format (maybe we should call it
.newrc :-), I would like to see a clear definition of how unsubscribed
groups are represented, and for the reason given above, the
time-offset is not appropriate in my opinion (btw, how does rrn do
this without direct access to the active file?)

-- 
Kim F. Storm        storm@texas.dk        Tel +45 429 174 00
Texas Instruments, Marielundvej 46E, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark
	  No news is good news, but nn is better!