taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (07/02/86)
Well, thanks to the efforts of Mike Rodriquez here at Labs we finally have
'rn' up and running. For the past year and a half I've been using 'notes'
exclusively, and have just completed the transition to 'rn'. I thought
I'd post some of my observations and comments on the two systems for
interested parties. Those that aren't really interested in the notes versus
news debate (etc) should probably just toss this in their kill file (er,
'J' past it)...
First off, let me present my bias up front - RN is GREAT! It's a LOT
better than notes for -> the way I read the Usenet <- ! I'm very impressed
and I think Larry (Wall) has done a great job!
There were a number of features of notes that always bothered me when I used
it daily, namely;
o Not being able to cross-post articles (and, conversely, not being
able to have a system that knew about cross-posted articles, so if
I were to read THIS article using notes, it would present it to me
twice - when I read 'net.news' AND 'net.news.notes')
o Not being able to take advantage of the information and capabilities
of the header lines is a big loss too - for example oftentimes I'd
post an article to a group only to find out that the article I had
replied to had a "Followup-To:" to another group. Or, even more
often, I'd get frustrated when I wanted to add keywords, or an
expiration date, or ??? (as an aside, when I started submitting
stuff to 'inews' directly for the moderated groups I was AMAZED at
all the funky and useful headers available!)
o Not being able to see the subject line of the replies (although
the version we're running here now seems to be able to do this)
is a drag too since oftentimes the conversation evolves as it
occurs...(and 'notes' doesn't have any feature to 'swing' a reply
down to a new basenote (e.g. to reply to an article, including the
article text, but to make the reply a new basenote). I ended up
saving the desired article to a file and moving to the 'end' of
the group (the index page) the creating a posting, reading in the
file, then going from there. A real pain, and so conversations in
notes tend to wander further afield (some of the internal HP
discussions are AMAZINGLY randomly structured...))
o Having to see the 'basenote' when any replies to it were new was
quite annoying too - especially when I used to read news from
home. (The newest version is supposed to have the ability to
bypass this annoying quirk)
o Also, not having any indication of what is new and what isn't
on the index page was also frustrating. It would be easy to, say,
have the 'basenote subjects' highlighted if new articles are
present in that chain of discussion...(again, the new version
is supposed to have some sort of trick to convey this information,
but I don't really know too much about it)
o The interface between Notes and the Unix system always seemed a bit
hostile, too...hard to say exactly what I mean by this, but using
'rn', I'm warned that postings will be spread throughout the world,
and, the first time I used "Pnews" (i.e. "followed up" an article)
it gave me a blurb on reading the netiquette document before creating
a posting and such. Notes just seems to ignore the rest of the
world. Unfortunately there is a significant cost for this.
o Notes having its own internal data structures that are incompatible
with all the other news reading software always bothered me too.
One of the cornerstones of the Unix philosophy, and the reason I
like the operating system so much, is that it encourages diversity.
I can use "vi", while the person next to me can use "emacs" and
another can use "rand" or "ed" or ?? Notes, on the other hand,
takes over the entire news system, to the exclusion of other news
software. The reason it took me so long to use 'rn' was that I had
to get to a site that had TWO COPIES of every article on the net.
Hplabs does this, to the terror of our disk coordinators, I'm sure!
There's just something super annoying about this. I mean, there
are plenty of different news systems that seem happy to coexist
on the existing basic file structure, but notes just trashes all
that. On the other hand, this could become a mindless flame, so
I'll stop talking about this problem...
On the plus side, though, there are some features of notes that I'll really
miss, and might end up hacking about in the 'rn' source to add the features;
o The ability to have an index page is a big win! It's really
nice to get a concise summary of the articles present in a news
group, especially when you haven't read the group in a long
while. I really wish 'rn' had this capability.
o The ability to concentrate on the BODY of the message rather than
the headers is also nice - when reading a message I don't have to
play "header-decoder" when using Notes, since it does all the
dirty work for me - centering the subject line, parsing the From:
and Org: lines, and so on.
o The chaining structure of 'notes' is nice too - it's a painless
way of grouping (somewhat) alike articles...(it breaks down pretty
fast though...)
So what does "rn" offer than I'm so enthused about? Well...
o The ability to use the headers available in the header of the
articles, not only when READING news, but when POSTING it too.
I couldn't have a Keywords: line OR a cross-posting if I were
using notes.
o The KILL file is a WONDERFUL feature! It's GREAT! I can't imagine
how I survived without it.
o The program is easier to use, in general - I just lean on the space
bar and it cruises through all the new articles (only! I don't have
to read the 'base notes' anymore!!) and the groups with new news
and stuff...
o The searching/macro features look pretty powerful, although I
haven't yet had a chance to really learn and use them...
o I think 'rn' will be a lot easier to deal with over the phone
line than notes is...(i.e. on slower terminals)
I don't know how objective this posting is - I'm still suffering from the
rosy glow of newness of 'rn', combined with a growing sense of frustration
with notes (oh! RN supports the LONG group names! No more "mod.computers."
supergroup with all the stuff from the different subgroups folded into it!).
I'm sure there are people who will take exception with some if not all of
the stuff I've listed herein. So be it.
*******************************************************************************
* The one comment I'll really stick by is the inability of users at a *
* site to use other than the 'notes' program. That's a BIG LOSS! There are *
* no absolutes in the world (absolutely!) and there are also no 'perfect' *
* systems, but to have a system that actively prevents the other systems from *
* being utilized ain't good! *
*******************************************************************************
I mean, how many people would by a system where only one language was
supported? Even if the language kept being improved, people are bound to
want different features and capabilities, and it's a sure bet that any
single language can't possibly address them all...
[At this point some people are saying 'but you CAN run news and notes on
the same machine!'. I'm sorry, but having two copies of every article isn't
an acceptable solution. Not with the network we have today, with 1.5 Meg a
day (plus) arriving. People just don't have the space on their machines!]
Finally, I think that both notes and news (rn,vnews,readnews) have their
redeeming features that make them a good system for different people, but,
due to the mutual exclusion of notes, I probably won't ever plan on making
it available on any machine I ever administrate...
From the far corner of the lab,
-- Dave Taylor (taylor@hplabs)
facilitator: mod.comp-soc and mod.conferences
---------
Disclaimer: While HP is actively promoting the notes system as the solution
to the 'news reading' problem, my comments in no way should be
construed as either a commentary on our strategy, nor as any-
thing else other than simply personal observations.dave@lsuc.UUCP (David Sherman) (07/04/86)
In article <410@hplabsc.UUCP> taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) writes: >On the plus side, though, there are some features of notes that I'll really >miss, and might end up hacking about in the 'rn' source to add the features; > I'm going to post this because I bet most rn specialists don't read this group (why would they read net.news.notes anyway?) I happen to read it because we run our own hacked-up version of notes for local computer conferencing (nothing to do with Usenet), while we use rn for Usenet. > o The ability to have an index page is a big win! It's really > nice to get a concise summary of the articles present in a news > group, especially when you haven't read the group in a long > while. I really wish 'rn' had this capability. IT DOES. It's the = key. > o The ability to concentrate on the BODY of the message rather than > the headers is also nice - when reading a message I don't have to > play "header-decoder" when using Notes, since it does all the > dirty work for me - centering the subject line, parsing the From: > and Org: lines, and so on. YOU CAN DO THIS. Just set -horg, for example, and your Org lines will all disappear. You can even customize it to whether you're on a slow line or not. Here's my .rninit file (my RNINIT environment variable is set to /u/dave/.rninit): -s3 -S -hsender -happarently-to -hdat -hreply-to -hmes -hart -hdist -hnewsg -hlines +4800-i=16 -2400-i=7 -href -hcc +4800+hpath -2400-hOrg -EMAILPOSTER="Rnmail -h %h %A" -ENEWSPOSTER="Pnews -h %h %A" -EMAILCALL='You have some new mail waiting!' > o The chaining structure of 'notes' is nice too - it's a painless > way of grouping (somewhat) alike articles...(it breaks down pretty > fast though...) You get that automatically with -S in rn (if you look above, you'll see I get it automatically - it's the equivalent of invoking rn with all the options shown). And, if you don't invoke rn with -S, you can still get it by typing ^N instead of n. Needless to say, I agree with all your positive comments about rn. Larry has indeed done a wonderful job. And he's also fixed - before you asked for them - all the things you complained about. And I agree about the disadvantages of notes. All you notes sites should seriously consider switching. Dave Sherman The Law Society of Upper Canada Toronto -- { ihnp4!utzoo pesnta utcs hcr decvax!utcsri } !lsuc!dave