nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Karl Nyberg) (02/20/88)
There has been some confusion over this of late, so let me try to clear it up
a bit. INFO-ADA (the mailing list) and comp.lang.ada (the USENET news
group) contain the same articles / messages. Posting an article to
comp.lang.ada will end up in INFO-ADA, and mailing a message to
info-ada@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu will end up in comp.lang.ada. INFO-ADA mail is
collected and digested on a daily basis, in order to reduce load on the
arpanet and the host providing redistribution service (thanks Frank).
Software exists for at least some computers to perform undigestification
(did I make that word up?), while comp.lang.ada traffic passes as individual
articles through another path in the overall system.
If your site gets the USENET news groups, it is preferred that you read the
material accordingly, and do not clutter the various networks with
additional overhead for mail. Some systems, notably TOPS20 systems have a
BBOARD system that is somewhat similar to the USENET news system, in that
only one copy of any article is maintained on the system. There are at
least three common programs for reading the USENET news - readnews/vnews,
rn, and GNU rnews. The actual files comprising the news group are generally
contained in a subdirectory "comp/lang/ada", usually of a directory
"/usr/spool/news" (/usr/spool/news/news on ajpo.sei.cmu.edu), and can be
copied, printed or mailed just as regular files.
ARPANET sites that have large readerships are encouraged to create a local
redistribution to minimize the net traffic. This has occurred in at least
some twenty-thirty locations so far, cutting the total quantity of addresses
in at least half over the past six months.
Archives are maintained in ~ftp/public/infoada, with an occasional lag time
from the posting of an article to the inclusion in the archive. Send
requests for back issues that are in-between as well as ALL administrative
questions to info-ada-request@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu.
-- Karl --
Karl A. Nyberg karl@grebyn.com, nyberg@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu
Grebyn Corporation karl%grebyn.com@umd5.umd.edu
P. O. Box 1144 {decuac,umd5}!grebyn!karl
Vienna, VA 22180-1144 703-281-2194