[net.general] small gripe

kdh (09/01/82)

	Why, when I use the "s" (save) command of readnews, does
	the article get created in my home directory, rather than
	in the directory that I am currently in?  This is, perhaps,
	a petty annoyance, but an annoyance none the less.  Seems
	that it actually would require less work, software-wise
	to place it in the current directory, rather than trashing
	around to find my home directory.

	Comments?

					Kevin Hunter
					houti!kdh
					(houx*!houti!kdh)

otto (09/01/82)

I think it is a good idea to put saved articles under the user's home
directory (or perhaps a directory of their choice determined by the value
of an environmental variable).  I am really tired of finding that I have
put "net.cook" articles under 10 or 15 different directories because I
chanced to read netnews between doing other work in those directories.
Locating all the files, then reassembling them in chronological order is
more time than its worth.  Three cheers to those who finally fixed up this
bug.  (For those who want to override this option, can't you just say
something like "s- ./localfile"?)

George Otto
Bell Labs, Indian Hill
----------------------

coltoff (09/04/82)

The real problem with the `s' command in readnews is the tilde(~).
Since the code in goes through the trouble of getting a path up
to your home directory if no NEWSBOX variable is set the tilde
slash typed by the user has to be trashed. This is a simple fix
of probably 3 or 4 lines of code.

We are using version 2.8 of news and later versions may have corrected
this problem.

While we are talking about news if anyone has problems with the `r'
command when using the msgs interface to readnews notify me by mail.
In our 2.8 this was fixed by the addition of a single character to
the source code.