[net.puzzle] Good info/Advice from Mark Brader

rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) (06/17/85)

>To: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!rcj
>Subject: Survey results on SPOILER to indicate answers
>References: <737@burl.UUCP>
>
>You misunderstand about rn.  Rn interprets a FORMFEED (^L) as a page
>break.  Since some other news readers just pass on the ^L unchanged,
>and some terminals clear the screen on receipt of it, the ^L which works
>so nicely with rn has exactly the wrong effect for some other people.
>However, a whole screenful of blank lines (say 24 linefeeds) does the
>desired thing with most or all news reading interfaces.
>
>I don't think this is an appropriate technique for net.puzzle, though.
>If a reader finds a problem interesting, it is up to them not to start
>reading articles that might be spoilers.  It's true that rn doesn't pause
>before each article and show you the subject line, but it DOES pause AFTER
>each article, and what you should do is the = command which lists the
>Subject lines of all unread articles in the group.  This is the careful
>way to read messages.
>
>Another rn technique is to temporarily reset the -i option while in
>net.puzzle, and so cause rn to pause before it gets to the body of the article.
>This is done by putting something like &-i=5 followed by X&-i=24 in the
>local kill file for net.puzzle.  (I think that's right; I haven't
>used this myself.)
>
>Mark Brader
>You may post this if you wish.
>

Thanks, Mark; good points all -- sorry about the misinformation regarding
rn and linefeeds.
-- 

The MAD Programmer -- 919-228-3313 (Cornet 291)
alias: Curtis Jackson	...![ ihnp4 ulysses cbosgd mgnetp ]!burl!rcj
			...![ ihnp4 cbosgd akgua masscomp ]!clyde!rcj