[news.software.b] status of tmn

lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) (03/13/89)

I've been unable to reach Eric Raymond.

I need information on when tmn will be available, and what the
approximate format of the history file will be.

Anybody know?
-- 
Eliot Lear
[lear@net.bio.net]

wisner@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Bill Wisner) (03/13/89)

History file format for 3.0 (and probably C, too):

<ezNHK#p6bSn=wisner@emptys.cc.umich.edu>	605680935 0	test/1 general/1
					 ^ that's a \t      ^ that too

The first number is the time() the message was received; the second number
if non-zero is the explicit time() when the message should expire.

the last field can consist of space-seperated path names for the article,
it can be blank, it can be the string "cancelled", or it can be a set
of message-IDs. I don't remember the use of that last case except that
it's only used when the article has not yet been received but has been
spotted in References: lines.

henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/15/89)

In article <1002@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> wisner@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Bill Wisner) writes:
>History file format for 3.0 (and probably C, too):
>
><ezNHK#p6bSn=wisner@emptys.cc.umich.edu>	605680935 0	test/1 general/1
>					 ^ that's a \t      ^ that too

Close, except that we thought using different kinds of white space to mean
different things was a bad idea (except for backward compatibility with
previous mistakes) and separated the subfields of the middle field with
'~' rather than ' ' (after abandoning a four-field history file as too
much of a compatibility hassle).

I really dislike using space and tab with different meanings, but I'll
have a last-minute look at the code and see if we can change this; I'd
really prefer compatibility.  I hope 3.0 is prepared to ignore extra
subfields (of the middle field), by the way; C will be, as a hedge against
future development.  (One obvious extra subfield which may be a last-
minute C addition is the size of the article, which matters to people
who are trying to do size-based expiry.)
-- 
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu

wisner@shadooby.cc.umich.edu (Bill Wisner) (03/15/89)

Don't take my word as the absolute truth. My information is from a rather
old beta version of TMN; Eric may very well have changed some things since
then.