john@garfield.UUCP (John McCarthy) (11/05/83)
I have also found the return paths for news articles to be
bizarre. Here is a man(1) page for a program that at least helps.
I'm submitting this now to solicit comments on improvements I could
make before I submit the sources to net.sources. It uses the data
collected from the net for the nmail(1) program so you'll need that
software to use this. I think it was submitted over the net a while
ago.
With news 2.10 you can use vi(1) to edit your headers. This makes
it easy to fix up return paths. I only wish you could send the headers
to your own mail+editor. This way I could fully automate the process by
running the headers through cvtpath before calling the editor (or even after).
The way 2.10 is set up now (at least our version) the user defined mailer
is used only with the 'rd' and 'fd' commands and it isn't sent
the References: line. I don't think the subject is even sent, but I
could easily be wrong on this. (Hmm maybe if I define the EDITOR to
be a program that runs vi(1), then optimises the result and returns
it to news? Kludgy but it might work) Note that my use of only vi(1)
in examples is not a sign of prejudece against other editors with these
capabilities. I just don't know how it's done with EMACs version xxx
by yyy, etc.
Anyway, I will wait about two weeks for replys. Then I'll make
any changes I think are necessary and send a distribution over net.sources.
PLEASE reply by mail if at all possible (We are directly connected to
both ihnp4 and allegra).
John McCarthy.
P.S. Just an aside. For those people who don't like path optimisers or
can't keep reasonable connection databases, removing loops in paths
would at least help. This wouldn't require any more info. than that
contained in the return path itself.
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===========
CVTPATH(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual CVTPATH(1)
NAME
cvtpath - find and optimise UUCP paths
SYNOPSIS
cvtpath path1 path2 ...
cvtpath < file
DESCRIPTION
Cvtpath is a program to find and optimise UUCP paths to
other computer systems. It uses a database created for the
nmail(1) program to find the paths. Systems not in the
database are handled gracefully, the path to the first sys-
tem that is in the database is optimised.
Cvtpath prints the best path for each argument on the stan-
dard output. If no arguments are given, the standard input
is read and each path found is optimised. Paths are defined
as any blank delimited word containing and exclamation (!)
character. All other input is output exactly as is. In
vi(1) the commands:
!10!cvtpath
will optimise the next ten lines in the file. This makes it
easy to optimise mail headers created by the 'r' command of
readnews(1).
FILES
/usr/lib/nmail.paths - UUCP path database
/usr/lib/pathdb.dir
/usr/lib/pathdb.pag - dbm(3) version of path database
SEE ALSO
nmail(1), readnews(1)
AUTHOR
John McCarthy (garfield!john)
BUGS
It does not optimise Internet addressing. The definition of
a path may be naive, and there is no way to escape an excla-
mation point. On systems without the dbm(3) database rou-
tines it is slow. The interface with news could be better.
Printed 11/4/83 MUN 1