CSvax:Pucc-H:Physics:crl (02/08/83)
#R:pur-ee:13000013:pur-phy:9400002:000:3400 pur-phy!crl Feb 7 14:15:00 1983 I like all of pur-ee!malcolm's ideas. Here are a few of my own: 1) Sequencing--I'd like the sequencer to know about single notes in a notesfile. If I fall behind, I don't want to read all 100 notes in net.misc at one sitting, for example. 2) rotation--instead of just a way to rotate the crypted jokes, how about a general way of piping the text to a command ala "s- |opr" from B news. 3) often, I find I want to scroll half a sceen, say when someone submits a table, piece of code, or a diagram. In a way, B news using "more" is a good thing--it give me the control I sometimes want, as well as reg. expr. searches. 4) Global permission lists--very good. I'd like to set myself up as the director for all groups w/o doing it manually (I use a "fake" user called notes to own everything. I don't like spreading myself around the system when I know I will someday leave) 5) I've had notes blow lunch a number of times when I tried to compress a notesfile w/o being user "notes". This leaves the NFINVALID bit set in the note.indx file, which basically closes off the notesfile to new submissions. I learned how to fix the index with adb, but it isn't a whole lot of fun. 6) I'd like to see more info available from nfstats--like, the current number of notes and resps. in a file, and, if in a verbose mode to even give the title of each note, date received, and last access time, as well as disk usage stats 7) Perhaps each notesfile could specify its own default expiration time so that we needn't run a number of nfarchives with time specifiers. This eliminates the possiblity of missing a notesfile. (For example, I expire net.jokes quicker than the rest, but since I don't want to forget a newly created group, I end up doing a nfarchive -10 net.jokes; nfarchive net.*; , thus having to go through net.jokes twice for nothing. 8) Checknotes is slower than checknews, which surprises me. I would think that notesfile's structure would make it quicker. From memory, I think it was 50%-90% slower. 9) The net.general/net.followup problem should be hacked in to help net serenity -- sigh! 10) I may be wrong, but from perusing the source, it seemed as if notesfiles tries to guess that an article is a response to another even if it comes from B news by looking for a "Re: " prefix that matches another article's title. If this is so, it could be made smarter to recognize a base note that comes in after a previous response, or just responses if the base is lost (ala transmission error, or net.followup) 11) Longer titles, perhaps, and put the title in the header of a note saved to a file. The title is often very important. 12) A "-j" command, if the j key bounces, or I'm too trigger happy in net.misc 13) Fully integrate B news control messages? 14) Put the notesfile info for each message spit out to news in the header instead of the message, for the benefit of B news readers. Version 2.9 and higher should pass the unrecognized headers forward without molestation. WHEW!!!!! What a mouthful! In spite of the above, I really do love notesfiles, but it just needs some "polish". In particular, it should be made as compatible with the network as a whole, especially with B news release 2.10, due out soon, since we notesfiles users are clearly in the minority Charles LaBrec pur-ee!Physics:crl purdue!Physics:crl
malcolm (02/08/83)
#R:pur-ee:13000013:pur-ee:13000014:000:240 pur-ee!malcolm Feb 7 17:34:00 1983 Woops, one more thing would be nice to have: How about a '/' command that would position the window over that part of the note. This would really help with things like the digests when I am only interested in one subject. Malcolm
andree@uokvax.UUCP (11/09/83)
#R:uokvax:11300002:uokvax:11300003:000:135 uokvax!andree Oct 30 15:35:00 1983 While we're at it, how about an interface to let you page back in the current message. Paging forward wouldn't be bad, either. <mike
lee@rochester.UUCP (Lee Moore) (02/18/84)
I saw something in net.news.b that would be perfect for notes. Namely the ability to "un-subscribe" to a base-note and its responces. If I see a base-note that starts a discussion that I have no interest in, it would be nice never to see that base-note or any of its responces again. Actually, what I really want is for this to happen only in the auto-sequencer. If I call notes directly, then it would be good to have have access to all the notes. Perhaps the index page could have indicate which base-notes I have un-subscribed to. -- (arpa) = lee@rochester rochester!lee = (uucp)