tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (05/31/90)
In article <1373@yenta.alb.nm.us> dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas) writes: >I think C news should have its own group. Anyone? Yes, I agree, it's time or past time. Most of the traffic here is about C news any more. I was just about to finally add it to my kill file (I am not a big kill file user) when I saw David's suggestion. Surely Henry and Geoff see this is reasonable now.
dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas) (05/31/90)
I think C news should have its own group. Anyone? David dt@yenta.alb.nm.us
hwt@.bnr.ca (Henry Troup) (05/31/90)
I agree. Much more than half the volume in this group is Cnews specific. -- Henry Troup - BNR owns but does not share my opinions ..uunet!bnrgate!hwt%bwdlh490 or HWT@BNR.CA
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (06/01/90)
In article <1373@yenta.alb.nm.us> dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas) writes:
I think C news should have its own group. Anyone?
I think you're right. I created it locally here, and I'll be
cross-posting to it when it's reasonable.
--Edchip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) (06/01/90)
According to dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas):
>I think C news should have its own group. Anyone?
I agree, but it should NOT be named "news.software.c".
Consider the novice: "I want to post an article about software written
in C. Let's see... Oh, good! This one is news.software.c! It must
be about C software!"
On the other hand, I can't think of a reasonable name that doesn't
have this problem. I like "news.software.c-news" a little better than
".c", but not much. Suggestions?
--
Chip, the new t.b answer man <chip%tct@ateng.com>, <uunet!ateng!tct!chip>henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (06/01/90)
In article <15573@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: >>I think C news should have its own group. Anyone? > >Yes, I agree, it's time or past time. Most of the traffic here is >about C news any more. I was just about to finally add it to my kill >file... What, you're not using C News yet, Tom? Shame on you. :-) >Surely Henry and Geoff see this is reasonable now. How about a counter-proposal: rename news.software.b to news.software.c? I'm sure we can put up with the occasional B News message -- there aren't enough of them to justify their own group. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) (No, I'm not serious about this suggestion, although it's not ridiculous.) Actually, what I *would* suggest is renaming news.software.b to simply news.software, instead. There really isn't enough traffic to justify splitting it. -- As a user I'll take speed over| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology features any day. -A.Tanenbaum| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) (06/01/90)
I think C news should have its own group. Yes please! -- Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam (piet@cwi.nl) "Money and news ain't what it used to be...."
smaug@eng.umd.edu (Kurt J. Lidl) (06/02/90)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: >>>I think C news should have its own group. Anyone? >> >>Yes, I agree, it's time or past time. Most of the traffic here is >>about C news any more. I was just about to finally add it to my kill >>file... > >How about a counter-proposal: rename news.software.b to news.software.c? >I'm sure we can put up with the occasional B News message -- there aren't >enough of them to justify their own group. :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) >(No, I'm not serious about this suggestion, although it's not ridiculous.) > >Actually, what I *would* suggest is renaming news.software.b to simply >news.software, instead. There really isn't enough traffic to justify >splitting it. I, on the other hand, would much rather see the newsgroups structured a little more rationally. (Call me silly!) I can forsee the day when there are more than just Bnews and Cnews as the major transport/relay packages around. Heck, I've even considered wrapping my own relay software. (Probably would have too, if Cnews hadn't come along last year...) At any rate: A proposal: Move: news.software.b -> news.software.system.b Create: -> news.software.system.c Move: news.software.anu-news -> news.software.system.anu-news Move: news.software.notes -> news.software.system.notes Move: news.software.nn -> news.software.readers.nn Move: news.software.nntp -> news.software.transport.nntp OK -- no doubt that some of this is merely a cosmetic change and has no real point. However, there is a clear distinction between the system software and the transport software. Getting Cnews running with nntp is a different kettle of fish than getting Cnews running with UUCP as the transport mechanism. Cross-posting between related groups would be encouraged where appropriate. And, if it turns out there is not enough traffic in news.software.system.c, Henry can always just feed it back into news.software.system.b for his own peace of mind. :-) I know that something like this has been suggested before, but I don't remember by whom. I would like to see a little commentary on this, either here or by E-Mail. Please consider this idea. I think it has a lot of possibilities, and deserves to be implemented. (I can already see a few more newsgroups that might be worthy of this, based on my private expectations of what will be happening in the next 6 months of in the news.* world of things: news.software.transport.nntp2 news.software.readers.trn But again, these are my own hope and dreams.) -Kurt -- /* Kurt J. Lidl (smaug@eng.umd.edu) | Unix is the answer, but only if you */ /* UUCP: uunet!eng.umd.edu!smaug | phrase the question very carefully. */
gary@dgcad.SV.DG.COM (Gary Bridgewater) (06/03/90)
Please don't split it!
The news.software region of the world plays to a pretty restricted
audience. The problems of one group are often the problems of
another - and even when that isn't strictly true consider that
b-news and c-news sites are intermixed all across the feed chain.
A bug in one can be rapidly felt in the other.
Also, an innovation in one can be useful to the other - dbz, for instance,
is a big + for b-news sites, especially those without dbm.
What would be gained by splitting them? Most of us would just read both
groups. Newcomers may not know the value of that and they might miss
important information posted in the "other" newsgroup.
If the ".b" part is off-putting to c-news sites then by all means let us
rename it generically to ease the annoyance. As a, currently, b-news site
I could live with ".c" if it kept the group from splitting.
--
Gary Bridgewater, Data General Corporation, Sunnyvale California
gary@sv.dg.com or {amdahl,aeras,amdcad}!dgcad!gary
The impossible we understand right away - the obvious takes a little longer.peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) (06/03/90)
In article <26666DD1.20D7@tct.uucp> chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes: > I like "news.software.c-news" a little better than ".c", but not much. > Suggestions? news.software.cnews -- `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.ferranti.com> 'U` Have you hugged your wolf today? <peter@sugar.hackercorp.com> @FIN Dirty words: Zhghnyyl erphefvir vayvar shapgvbaf.
lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) (06/05/90)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >What, you're not using C News yet, Tom? Shame on you. :-) We're not, either. For the reason why, see all the bug reports about it in news.software.b :-) >Actually, what I *would* suggest is renaming news.software.b to simply >news.software, instead. There really isn't enough traffic to justify >splitting it. Maybe not the total volume of the traffic, but the amount of Cnews vs. non-Cnews traffic might surprise you. Here's what I culled out of our spool directory: Articles related to Cnews (by subject): (*) 13 cnews on a 3B1 with ksh 9 suggestion: news.software.c 8 "x" field for C news 7 Cnews pathnames 6 history.pag Growing out of control! 5 dbz and uux -z option questions 4 spacefor and DBM 3 remind me again. manual newgroups for C news ? 3 manual newgroup for C news 3 Beware of "all" distribution in C news 2 spacefor under sysV3.2 2 NEWSCTL/mailpaths 2 Help! With ihave/sendme and C news. 1 mailpaths (C News) 1 length of sys file entries in C news 1 Need Help with problems posting with nn & cnews 1 ME/my.real.name (was Cnews pathnames) 1 Fix for SCO posting with nnpost to cnews 1 Descriptive names (Re: suggestion: news.software.c) 1 Cnews under Microport SysV/AT? 1 Cnews history file 1 C news logging help 1 C news lack of error logging. 1 C News plans 1 C News patch of 25-May-1990 ---- 79 Articles not related to Cnews: 4 Duplicate Message-IDs in history 3 synthesize a new newsgroup from a bunch of old ones. 3 How do you print the man pages without [nt]roff? 2 rn patch 44/45. 2 Why won't my EXPIRE commands remove some old stuff? 2 WANTED: News compression information... 2 Pickup truck wanted 2 How do I set up a private usenet? 2 Bug in Bnews?? (and where's the current version?) 1 sendactive control message 1 nntpxmit failure to fakesyslog 1 history changes 1 Wanted: an extended news program 1 Problems posting to moderated newsgroups 1 Patch for Logging problems in nntpxmit 1 PC-NFS newsreader for NNTP available 1 Newsgroups question... 1 Logging problems in nntpxmit 1 Bnews2.11 under HP-UX rev. 7.0 1 B News core files and password file 1 Active file weirdness ---- 34 What we have here is 70% of the articles in the group discussing Cnews or Cnews related issues. Next we look at who is doing the posting. Postings by Cnews authors: 21 henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) 1 geoff@utstat.uucp (Geoff Collyer) ---- 22 Postings by non-Cnews authors: [ omited for brevitys sake ] ---- 91 Which indicates 19% of the articles in news.software.b are from the authors of news.software.c :-) I think the numbers speak for themselves. Let's create news.software.c. There is enough discussion going on related to Bnews to make the split desirable. I still run it. I have no plans whatsoever to run Cnews. Quite a few people feel the same way. I don't see the amount of Bnews related traffic dropping much over the next while. Why can't we stay out of each others hair by splitting the group? ----- (*) I did the subject breakdown by using 'grep -i c[ *]news' in the spool directory, then added in other threads that adressed cnews specific issues, as determined by a cursory inspection of some articles. The numbers may be off by a bit. If they are, it likely due to my missing Cnews discussions in the non-Cnews thread, so the 70% figure might actually be a bit low. Big deal :-) -- Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,cbmvax,mips}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca Sendmail has been described as the largest program yet created that does absolutely nothing. -- Mr. Protocol
battan@qtc.UUCP (Jim Battan) (06/05/90)
In article <15573@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes: >In article <1373@yenta.alb.nm.us> dt@yenta.alb.nm.us (David B. Thomas) writes: >>I think C news should have its own group. >Yes, I agree, it's time or past time. It's been past time for over a year now. Here's my posting of May 20 1989: (There's some interesting historical tidbits in here too.) From battan Sat May 20 10:58:21 PDT 1989 From: battan@qtc.UUCP (Jim Battan) Subject: Results of news.software.c newsgroup poll Over four months ago I posted a CALL FOR DISCUSSION on the creation of a news.software.c newsgroup to handle the "imminent" C News discussions. I received the following (abbreviated) replies. I do not have time to issue the CALL FOR VOTES; someone else should volunteer. Personal opinion: After reading the replies, I now recommend the renaming of news.software.b to news.software. ----------- (First, my original posting:) From: battan@tc.fluke.COM (Jim Battan) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.software.b,news.admin Subject: CALL FOR DISCUSSION: news.software.c Message-ID: <6815@fluke.COM> Date: 1 Feb 89 22:17:23 GMT Now that the formal release of C news has a more definite date, it's time to call for discussion on creating a new newsgroup based on this new version of the USENET software. The volume and need isn't there now, but, at least to me, it's obvious that it will be soon after the package is released. It would be nice to complete the discussion and call for votes in time for the newsgroup to be created before the software is released. ----------- Does the fact that the authors of C news have repeatedly stated that they don't want to have a newsgroup for these sorts of discussions have any bearing on what you're doing? In the past, both Henry and Geoff have wanted bugfixes and suchlike mailed to them, rather than posted. I recall that they also felt that the current news software group was quite adequate for general discussions of the previous C-news release. Perhaps you ought to ask them before you propose this new newsgroup. ----------- I think that this is a good idea; but it should NOT be named something as easy-to-misunderstand as "news.software.c". Otherwise, we'll get a deluge of neophytes posting miscellaneous C software. I suggest "news.software.cnews". ----------- Makes sense. However, since there really isn't that much traffic regarding the current news software (except from new users), why create a new group? Unless you are concerned about people getting confused between the two sets of software, I don't think there is really a need either at the present time, or in the future. ----------- The traffic on news.software.b is not enough that it warrants the creation of another group to handle C. That is, the two discussions could quite likely co-exist in the same group without problem. Therefore I suggest creation of news.software and deletion of news.software.b ----------- There's very little traffic in news.software.b, so let's just change the description. On second thought: fig% grep news.software.b /usr/lib/news/newsgroups news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software. fig% No change is necessary. Let's use n.s.b until C news bugs overwhelm any other discussion that goes on there. ----------- Well, provided there will be ongoing discussion of the package after its release (and I'm sure there will be), and seeing as how the only existing group which is even *close* to being the right place for it is news.software.b, which is definitely NOT the right place, I don't see a big problem with justifying the existence of a news.software.c group. ----------- Punt news.software.b, create news.software (for talk of B 2.11, B 3.0, C), leave news.software.nntp and news.software.notes as they are. ----------- Until this post reminded me about news.software.nntp and news.software.notes I too agreed. Simply renaming news.software.b to news.software isn't the best idea because the name is now too general. Perhaps a new name should be news.software.b-c (or just .bc, or .b-n-c, or .b+c if all known operating systems will accept that). Maybe we should just change the newsgroups line to read: news.software.b B-news-compatible software and its descendants. A couple of years from now, when C-news is widespread, we can change it to: news.software.c C-news-compatible software and its ancestors. with an appropriate addition to the $LIBDIR/aliases file. ----------- >(or just .bc, or .b-n-c, or .b+c if all known operating systems will ^^^^ I know at least one o.s. that will _not_ accept this. Please do not use this as a name. ----------- >The traffic on news.software.b is not enough that it warrants the >creation of another group to handle C. That is, the two discussions >could quite likely co-exist in the same group without problem. Therefore >I suggest creation of news.software and deletion of news.software.b But news.software overlaps news.software.nntp (for example). I prefer creating a group news.software.misc, to put all discussions in do *not* fit in another news.software.* group. When discussions about one specific thing (e.g. C news, rn, vn, nn etc.) are enough for creating a news group, it can be separated from news.software.misc. Separating non-B-news items from news.software.b should be done! ----------- >Perhaps a new name should be news.software.b-c >(or just .bc, or .b-n-c, or .b+c if all known operating systems will >accept that). This is a joke, right? What a revoltingly ugly set of newsgroup names. Subjective judgment, of course. B 2.11, B 3.0, and C variants of news are all rather similar in one important respect. All are intended for UNIX systems. Given the nature of the USENET (most sites are UNIX machines) I see no problem with a generic news.software newsgroup to discuss all of them. Since the future of the news software is very unclear (we have C news and B 3.0 news both vying to be the next generation, and what will probably happen is that both will become widespread), limiting a newsgroup to just B or C news is very shortsighted. ----------- I should reiterate the position that I have taken on this in the past: there's barely enough traffic about *all* versions of the news software to keep one newsgroup busy, never mind half a dozen. What we probably ought to have is a single "news.software" group, with no subgroups created except when the need is truly demonstrated (as opposed to merely forecast). ----------- I don't mind if people want to talk about C news and form news.software.c to do so (in fact, I'm flattered, unless it turns out to be a lot of complaining). What I think we I wanted to avoid is a newsgroup like comp.os.minix with us as resident gurus; C news has already taken too much of our time and we want to get out of the news software business. The transport protocols rarely change and we would like to move on to other things. We will of course continue to run C news ourselves, so C news will not be an orphan, but we don't plan 40 Larry-Wall-style patches either, and have no plans now for future releases. -- Jim Battan {uunet!sequent,sun!nosun}!qtc!battan +1 503 626 3081 Quantitative Technology Corp 8700 SW Creekside Place Beaverton, OR 97005