tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (01/05/90)
In article <433@texas.dk> storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm) writes: > It keeps a time-stamp and a seek offset in the active file in a > separate file. This works just fine until the day where somebody > choses to rebuild the active file (or just sorts it) [the consequences > of this is left as an excercise to the reader :-]. Well, I'll tell you the consequences because it has happened here far too often. I like to keep the active file sorted; there is no time of day that I can be certain that at least one person is not reading news. If I change the order of lines in the active file (presumably things prior to that seek value?) then someone reading news with rn will find a nasty surprise when he exits the group he is in. It will declare every subscribed group in .newsrc to be bogus, unsubscribe them automatically, and push them all to the end of .newsrc. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, this is a huge pain in the ass for users and me alike. I always thought this had something to do with the soft pointers, but perhaps it is this seek value. Or is that what the soft pointers are? I just don't know the internals of rn well enough to do anything about it and haven't taken the time to learn. I've also seen the problem come up when I decide to remove an old local group, for example, from the active file. A fix would be _greatly_ appreciated. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))