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. us.UUCP: ucbvax!allegra!garfield!john can.UUCP: utcsrgv!garfield!john MA BELL: (709) 737-8330 SNAIL: Computing Services;Memorial University;St. John's, NFLD.;A1C 5S7 =========== 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