Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!batcomputer!pyramid!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: e...@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.misc
Subject: 3.0 news -- clearing up confusion
Message-ID: <223494f9:190e@snark.UUCP>
Date: 9 Mar 88 00:42:26 GMT
Organization: Thyrsus Enterprises, Malvern PA 19355
Lines: 34
I received the following by email today. Since it reflects what may be
a widespread confusion, I am posting it along with my reply.
> I am starting to get a little confused. How is your news 3.0 related
>to new C netnews from the University of Toronto? Are we heading toward
>two different versions of netnews? I'm not sure I like the sound of that.
>Its hard enough when not everyone is at the latest patch level. If you
>could shed some light on this subject I would greatly appreciate it.
No, 3.0 news is not C news. It is an entirely independent rewrite that
evolved by mutation (and eventual 100% replacement) of the code in the
4.3BSD beta release of 2.10.3. It does incorporate a number of C news
ideas, however, and the Toronto people are listed as contributors to the
design. But I am the person responsible for the code that's in there now.
Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer have stated that they are not interested
in maintaining a main-line news release. Therefore, my understanding is
that 3.0 will be the official continuation of the B news line. I will maintain
and extend it. I have plans to extend netnews to support full hypertext
functionality, if I can scrape together the money to work on it full-time.
Also note that C news only redoes the "transport" layer -- rnews, expire,
inews. The only reader they supply is a hacked-over Australian version of
readnews. 3.0, on the other hand, supplies rewritten and extended readers,
including a couple of new ones and a back end plus control code for GNUMACS.
I'm going to post this to try and forestall a flood of similar queries.
..!{ihnp4,seismo,rutgers}!cbmvax!snark!eric --> Eric S. Raymond
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric
Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: e...@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.misc
Subject: 3.0 news -- yet more anti-confusion info
Message-ID: <2235ecb6:25be@snark.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 88 01:09:02 GMT
Organization: Thyrsus Enterprises, Malvern PA 19355
Lines: 51
Responses to my posting attempting to clear up the confusion about
the upcoming netnews release brought up some more points that need to
be clarified.
1) 3.0's active file format and spool directory organization are
identical to those of 2.11. The sys and history file formats
have changed.
2) All of 2.11's configuration options are supported either
identically or with close equivalents. Configuration is
much easier in the 3.0 version, there's a monster config
script that knows about all the options, asks you questions
and does consistency checks.
3) 3.0 (in its earlier incarnations as Teenage Mutant Ninja Netnews)
has been running in production on my generic 68010 box for over
a year. During that time various versions of it have been tested
on a Sun, a Pyramid, a VAX, and a 386. The code is *very* portable,
all NULL-dereferences and int-equals-(char *) assumptions have been
long since lasered out (it lints clean!).
And then there's the *big* issue: long-term reliability.
The 2.10.X/2.11 code was getting grubby and over-hacked. Whatever design
discipline had originally been present in the B news line got lost under
multiple layers of kluging and patching as the code grew by accretion. This
devolution wasn't really anyone's fault; large systems extended by lots of
different people over time tend to get that way. But the result was hard to
modify without damage -- hence the problems that have led to fourteen official
patches and a lot of gripes since 2.11's release.
The 3.0 rewrite has hosed out all the crap and reorganized everything around a
clean architectural skeleton and an appropriate set of abstract data types. I
hope and believe that the result is considerably more robust than 2.10.X was
and 2.11 has been. At the very least, there are no longer a multitude of
strange dark cobwebby corners for bugs to lurk in; everything in the new
code is commented, all the interfaces are documented, and a debugging
exerciser is provided.
There are a couple of minor known problems in the code relating to various
storage-use and execution-time optimizations. These are documented in a BUGS
file, and I hope to have most (if not all) of them stomped by the time the
NNTP changes come back from Erik Fair.
--
Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric
Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!unisoft!hoptoad!gnu
From: g...@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.misc
Subject: Reading an article in whatever newsgroup you encounter first
Message-ID: <4312@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 4 Apr 88 03:32:02 GMT
References: <507@fig.bbn.com> <224167cd:252b@snark.UUCP> <2015@epimass.EPI.COM> <528@drilex.UUCP>
Organization: Grasshopper Group in San Francisco
Lines: 22
I use vnews as my news reader and I regularly get bit by the way it
will only show you an article in the first newsgroup on the Newsgroups:
line to which you subscribe.
Often when some interesting discussion cross-posts into a newsgroup I
read, or I see a pointer to a group I don't usually read, I will go there
and try to read the discussion. Vnews will only show me the parts that
aren't cross-posted to some group I subscribe to (whether or not I
actually get around to reading that newsgroup).
From what I hear of rn, it improves on this behaviour by noticing when
you have read a message and marking it as read in all newsgroups to which
it is posted. There are no other criteria for "should I show him this
message, which is the next one in the newsgroup" other than "has he seen
it already?". I like that. Let's not make it impossible in the new
netnews implementation.
[I don't use "rn" because it asks too many questions. I like giving commands
a lot more than answering questions.]
--
{pyramid,pacbell,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu g...@toad.com
"Don't fuck with the name space!" -- Hugh Daniel
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