evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) (12/31/90)
No, the issue hasn't died. I've just been keeping track of all the
comments, public and private, that have been posted or mailed to me
since I first issued a call for discussion on this topic.
Under a separate posting you'll see a call for votes resulting from this
discussion. But, under separate cover, I want to touch on the handfull
of separate issues dealt with in the discussion. Since there was quite
the divergence of opinion, I can only hope that those of you don't get
all of what you wanted will still support it in principle. Out of a total
of 39 postings and messages, only one was even mildly against the
*concept* of an applications hierarchy. The difference of opinion was on
the implementation.
ISSUE 1: comp.apps.* or comp.applications.*?
This subject, which matters little to me, appeared the most emotional
one. Of the 14 people who voiced preferences, 10 preferred the shorter
"apps" nomenclature, generally expressing that it's a clear enough
abbreviation, certainly has enough precedence in the existing hierarchy,
is less of a pain to type, and is more charitable to Usenet systems with
filename-length restrictions.
Like I said, I don't myself care (and neither did the majority of people
who participated in the discussion so far). But based on the above
count, I'm going to propose comp.apps.*.
ISSUE 2: comp.apps.* or comp.unix.apps.*?
I'm going to take the minimalist approach here and say that my intent
here is mainly programs that go across platforms. It has already been
pointed out to me that there are other apps groups either extant or
proposed for msdos, os2, the amiga and maybe elsewhere. And, there
just aren't that many applications that run on UNIX and nowhere else.
Only two of the respondents said they wanted comp.unix.apps.*
ISSUE 3: How many groups?
The first proposal in the summer was for seven subgroups. The more
recent proposal for discussion was for five.
My final proposal will be for a sole group: comp.apps.misc. This was
specifically suggested by a number of people.
Nobody could agree on the best mix. Some said they thought that
comp.tex.* or comp.databases should eventually be moved to comp.apps.
That's too ambitious for right now, and I'll leave the proponents
of those ideas to push these moves themselves.
Some said that a single group such as comp.apps.wp would only lead to
"my word processor is better than yours" flame wars. I've come to agree
with that argument, especially after seeing all the WordPerfect bashing
that took place recently in news.groups.
My preference right now is for comp.apps.<category>.<product>.
Proponents of individual products can use standard net vote guidelines
to determine if there's enough support for a newsgroup for it. The
first group, comp.apps.misc, will be a place where people can determine
if there's enough traffic to justify splitting off a separate group for
a single product (or one company's line of products).
A good point was made that having a group for a single (popular) product
might encourage participation from the software company themselves, when
they might be hesitant to participate in a misc group. If, say,
WordPerfect users had their own group, there'd be a minimum of people
reading the group who don't like that product. There's also a number of
individual applications which right now have mailing lists, which could
be gatewayed into the newsgroups.
IFF comp.apps.misc wins, I will propose comp.apps.wp.wordperfect. The
two will be dealt with totally separately.
A call for votes for comp.apps.misc will be posted shortly.
Thanks to the people who participated in the discussion, publicly and
privately:
"Bruce E. Golightly" <bg0l+@andrew.cmu.edu>
"Paul Kunz" <PFKEB%SLACVM.bitnet@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca>
ARUSSELL@oavax.csuchico.edu
Art Nicolaysen <art@wciu.edu>
Bryce Jasmer <jasmerb@mist.CS.ORST.EDU>
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@druid.UUCP>
LVRON@SATURN.LERC.NASA.GOV (Ron Graham)
Peter da Silva <peter@ficc.ferranti.com>
Tom Thomson <tom@nw.stl.stc.co.uk>
Tom.Lane@G.GP.CS.CMU.EDU
bbryan@pdn.paradyne.com (Bill Bryan)
bert!andyw (Andy Wright)
bmay@news.chips.com (Brad May)
bob@consult.UUCP (Bob Willey)
cathyf@is.rice.edu (Catherine Anne Foulston)
chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg)
clear@cavebbs.gen.nz
davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat)
dhartung@chinet.chi.il.us (Dan Hartung)
dma@pcssc.com (Dave Armbrust)
ed@dah.sub.org (Ed Braaten)
epeterso@houligan.encore.com (Eric Peterson)
fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home)
jah@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Jonathan Helton)
jeenglis%alcor.usc.edu@usc.edu (Joe English Muffin)
lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot)
lvron@earth.lerc.nasa.gov (Ronald E. Graham)
michael@fts1.UUCP (Michael Richardson)
niklas@appli.se (Niklas Hallqvist)
nominil!linimon@cs.utexas.edu (Mark Linimon)
rick@pavlov.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Richard H. Miller)
robertj@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM (Robert Jaquiss)
rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz)
tigris!latour.Sandelman.ocunix.on.ca!mcr@uunet.uucp (Michael Richardson)
uflorida!rm1!bapat@gatech.uucp (Subodh Bapat)
wjb@cogsci.cog.jhu.edu (William J. Bogstad)
--
Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
In PEI they don't allow abortions, yet they're building one - the GST centre