[net.news.b] what is f for

george (11/08/82)

I am using version "defs.h 2.9 6/26/82".
As most people know, when submitting an article
there is no escape to an editor.
[If there are any incantations to get an editor, make them public.]
I have assumed that this is a recognized deficit
and is apt to be corrected eventually.

Because of the lack of editor escape,
I normally compose replies outside of readnews
and manually submit them to postnews.
This requires my simulating the header fields,
newsgroup, title, references.
This permits much opportunity for typos and oversights.

Today, I had a reply (idis.156) that was so simple
that I did not think that I would need an editor.
I tried the "f" response to readnews.
Inews rejected it, telling me that I did not really want to
post that article.
Searching through inews.c, I found that this was apparently
because my submission was too short.

I can't use "f" on long articles because there is no editor escape.
I can't use "f" on short articles because they are rejected.
What is "f" used for?

Am I doing something wrong?

Of course, I know that I could hack up the sources
or try to get my site to install notesfile.


		George Rosenberg
		duke!mcnc!idis!george
		decvax!idis!george
		floyd!idis!george

trb (11/09/82)

My favorite interface for inputting netnews (and I do that alot) is
ittvax!swatt's sendnewsmail shell script.  A typical netnews input
session would look like this:
-----
% mail news
Subject: my favorite netnews input interface:net.news.b
My favorite interface for inputting netnews (and I do that alot) is
ittvax!swatt's sendnewsmail shell script.  A typical netnews input
session would look like this:
...
^D
-----

This uses Berkeley Mail, with the mailbox "news" aliased to swatt's program.
Sendnewsmail pulls the newsgroup name out of the Subject field and passes
the message properly to inews.  Presto.  The utility of Berkeley Mail and the
readership of netnews.  What more could a man want?  Acually, it's not
perfect - I think it has trouble saving dead.articles if they are going to a
bogus newsgroup or something, but I use it all the time.  For following up,
I just survive with my EDITOR env variable throwing me into vi.

The sendnewsmail script should be in the netnews src/misc directory,
or swatt can post it if demand demands.

	Andy Tannenbaum   Bell Labs  Whippany, NJ   (201) 386-6491

george (11/09/82)

References: idis.157 floyd.800

First Andy does not answer the question "What is f used for?".
He does address the relevant issue of how to submit followup
articles.

I found a copy of Swatt's script.
>From what I understand, there is no substantial
difference between it and postnews.

With postnews one types the newsgroup, title, and references manually.
With the described method of using sendnewsmail
the newsgroup and title are typed manually (see Andy's example below).
Presumably reference lines have to be supplied manually in the body.
But, if the sendnewsmail script could resolve references,
a similarly modified postnews script should be able to resolve them.

	-----
	% mail news
	Subject: my favorite netnews input interface:net.news.b
	My favorite interface for inputting netnews (and I do that alot) is
	ittvax!swatt's sendnewsmail shell script.  A typical netnews input
	session would look like this:
	...
	^D
	-----

		George Rosenberg
		idis!george

dmmartindale (11/09/82)

	'f' is actually quite usable for submitting followup articles if you
use the editor escape which IS available.  If you read the documentation for
the followup command which is part of readnews(1), it says that if the
environment variable EDITOR is set to the pathname of an editor, that
will be called to let you compose your followup.  I use /usr/ucb/ex because
it lets me go into 'vi' mode if I wish.  If you use /bin/ed you have to
ignore the initial error you get from trying to edit a file which doesn't
exist yet.
	Postnews will also call this EDITOR whenever you post an
article.  However, I never actually use either postnews or inews to generate
original news articles (not followups) anymore.  On systems with Berkeley's
delivermail, there is a much better way.  In the 'misc' directory of
your news distribution you will find a file called 'sendnewsmail'.  If you
install this somewhere and set up an alias in /usr/lib/aliases so that
all mail sent to (for example) 'sendnews' is actually piped through
this shell script, it will strip out title and newsgroup information from
the Subject line and then call inews on the rest.  So to post an article
to net.general and net.flame titled "enough hamburgers", I would do:

mail sendnews
~s enough hamburgers: net.general,net.flame
<body of article - I'll spare you my opinion>
EOT

Of course, all the usual escapes for editing the message are available, and
you can even mail something to a list of people and post it in one swell foop
(if the people don't mind the funny-looking Subject: line).
Anyway, you really don't have to suffer with raw postnews.  There are better
tools available.  Even if you don't have delivermail, you can use EDITOR.

	Dave Martindale

PS: my /usr/lib/aliases entry is simply:
	sendnews:"|/usr/lib/news/sendnewsmail"

mark (11/09/82)

There is indeed an editor arrangement for version 2.9 news.  What
you do is put
	EDITOR=/usr/ucb/vi
in your environment.  Then postnews and followup will automatically
put you in that editor instead of having you type it directly in.

Perhaps this should be the default.

	Mark

sjb (11/10/82)

If you set the EDITOR shell (or csh) variable to the path of
your favorite editor, followup and postnews will throw you
into that to prepare your article.  You can then write, edit,
check spelling (!spell), etc.  You must remember though to
write out the editor buffer before quitting.