wtm@bunker.UUCP (Bill McGarry) (05/11/86)
In message # 6903, guido@mcvax complains of difficulties in reading
digests.
"rn" has several features which might help you a bit with digests.
First, the command ^G (control G) will display the next article within
a digest with the header information underlined.
Next, you can define macros for rn. In my case, I've defined
"^Aq" (which is a function key on my terminal) to mean "=". If you
would like to see a quick list of the subject lines in a digest, you
could define some key to "!grep Subject %A" which would display the list
of Subject lines within the current article (%A will expand to the full
path name of the current article.
Hope this helps some.
Bill McGarry
Bunker Ramo, Trumbull, CT
{decvax, ittatc, philabs}!bunker!wtmmangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (05/14/86)
In reply to complaints about the digest problem, the ^G function was suggested. This doesn't really solve the problem, because it's only real effect is to skip the undisplayed portion of a long digested article. It doesn't allow you to read the articles in whatever order you wish, and it goes to the next subject it can find, even if that subject is displayed on the current page (at least, it does the latter on our system). It's difficult to reply to a single digest article, or indeed, to do any action on a single digest article; you have to edit out the parts that you don't want. I really don't understand why digests are an appropriate form for a newsgroup anyway, especially one that is moderated. C. Wingate
guido@boring.uucp (Guido van Rossum) (05/17/86)
In article <1143@bunker.UUCP> wtm@bunker.UUCP (Bill McGarry) writes: >"rn" has several features which might help you a bit with digests. >First, the command ^G (control G) will display the next article within >a digest with the header information underlined. >[and continues with a macro to grep the digest for ^Subject:] Having started this discussion, I would like to object to this suggestion (and also to the slight undertone that I don't know how to use rn properly). ^G is completely inadequate for me. I want to be able to use *all* rn's services on the individual digests. You can't create macros that do the equivalent of 's', 'w', 'r', 'f', 'M', '^N' and several others (and even if you could, I'd object to the different command set for digests than for normal articles. Remember, "don't mode me out"). I will probably start an action sending personal mail to all the moderators of digestified groups. I'm going to fight digests until they're gone (or until rn hides the difference completely -- would this be possible, Larry? I assume not w/o changing the format of .newsrc). Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@mcvax.uucp>
fair@styx.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (05/19/86)
As the gateway maintainer for the mod groups coming from the ARPA Internet, I applaud the sentiments being expressing in opposition to digests on the USENET. Historically digests were a stopgap measure to prevent the mailers on the internet from being inundated by great volumes of individual messages on the large mailing lists (e.g. SF-LOVERS, HUMAN-NETS). A form of message batching, really. They continue to serve this purpose admirably on the internet, however, as noted here, they make no sense at all on the USENET because we do message batching at the transport level. So how can YOU join the fight against digests? Well, when I last approached the moderators of the various digested mailing lists on the internet, I was almost universally turned down. Exactly two moderators listened and acted on what I told them: Dr. Kenneth Laws of the AILIST (mod.ai), and Jon Solomon of the TELECOM digest (mod.telecom). I got the impression that the uncooperative moderators didn't believe me when I told them that I represented a community of thousands of readers whose software is vastly better suited to individual messages, rather than digests. What YOU can do is mail a note to the moderator of the digested groups that you read, urging him or her to send the individual messages to the gateway at ucbvax.berkeley.edu (headers intact), rather than the digested form. I stand ready to help them with the conversion as necessary. If many of you respond in this manner, perhaps there will be a change. Perhaps there will come a day when digests are long forgotten, and we all have better tools to deal with the rapidly increasing volumes of our worldwide network... write your moderator! spread the word! down with digests! Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu P.S. There is a special place on the other side of the river for which my posting site is named for those moderators in USENET land that use digests. They should know better.
lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (05/20/86)
In article <6912@boring.UUCP> guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) writes: >...I'm going to fight digests until >they're gone (or until rn hides the difference completely -- would this >be possible, Larry? I assume not w/o changing the format of .newsrc). You assume correctly. There are two ways to make rn deal with digests, neither of which is nice. One, we could redefine article numbers to look like 123.1, 123.2, 123.3, etc. This would not only force different notation in the .newsrc (or some parallel file), but would also make the internal bitmaps much harder to work with. Two, we could treat a digest as a sub-newsgroup, but this loses all the benefits of subject searching, suppression, etc. Rn really wants to see a newsgroup with a flat "number-space", at least in its current incarnation. The basic problem is this: how to reserve a set of article numbers for the undigestified articles such that those who want to read digests aren't penalized. A simple solution with a site-by-site granularity would be to make inews able to split digests into separate articles. To let some of the people at a site read digests while others read separate articles requires a little more work. If disk space is cheap you could have two separate newsgroups. Otherwise you'd need to have the virtual article interface I've been meaning to put into rn for a long time, and then the undigestified article would simply be a different view of the internally cross-referenced digest. More complications to inews, however. Nevertheless, inews is the correct place to put such complications--otherwise you end up executing the same complicated code many times over each time someone decides to read the digest. We have enough trouble already justifying the CPU costs of news without multiplying those costs unnecessarily. Larry Wall, believe it or not. sdcrdcf!lwall P.S. No, I don't have time to hack inews. I may do it anyway, of course. But if I do it will take me even longer to answer the 5 MONTHS of mail I have squirreled away in my inbox. Psychiatrist: Why did they think you qualified for this job? Patient: I had the two primary virtues of a good programmer: laziness and impatience.
ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (05/22/86)
Erik: While having the obstinate moderators send the articles individually would probably be more timely, why don't you just appease the USENET community for the rest of these groups and put something into your machine that breaks the articles into individual messages. Since my mail system seems to be able to do so just fine, I see no reason why you can't. -Ron
fair@styx.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (05/29/86)
The reasons that I won't (as opposed to can't) break up the ARPANET digests at ucbvax are twofold: 1. most of the digests that I gateway do not follow the RFC934 spec for digests. 2. most digests remove useful or even crucial header information which would be there, had the letter gone through normal SMTP channels as an individual entity. This is to say that it would be an incredible mess to attempt automated break up of all the digests at ucbvax. The USENET represents the lion's share of the readership of all the gatewayed digests, and on that basis I don't think it is unreasonable to ask the moderators to accommodate us. Erik E. Fair styx!fair fair@lll-tis-b.arpa
davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP (Davidsen) (06/10/86)
It may come as a shock to you, but some of us disagree with you. Some
of us like digests because (a) they often group comments on a subject
which would otherwise dribble in over several days, and (b) some of the
most blatent nonsense is omitted or at least identified as such by the
moderator. I would not be in favor of only moderated groups and
digests, but I am happy with the choice. Go stamp out something else.
PS: there are a number of tools for undigestification if you wish to
use them, complaining that rn doesn't do what you (personally) want is
like saying that your screwdriver doesn't drive nail well. This is not
to say that enhancements aren't welcome, I just don't think they're
*needed*.
<bill>
--
-bill davidsen
ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz!--\
\
unirot ------------->---> crdos1!davidsen
/
sixhub ---------------------/ (davidsen@ge-crd.ARPA)
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (06/12/86)
Bill Davidsen writes: >It may come as a shock to you, but some of us disagree with you. Some >of us like digests because (a) they often group comments on a subject >which would otherwise dribble in over several days, and (b) some of the >most blatent nonsense is omitted or at least identified as such by the >moderator. I would not be in favor of only moderated groups and >digests, but I am happy with the choice. Go stamp out something else. (b) is simply a function of moderation: if there's good moderation, then you get this, and if there's bad or no moderation, you don't, regardless of whether there's digestification. (a) is partly a matter of moderation. Unfortunately for the news, few moderators group together articles principally by topic; there's almost always several different topics in each digest. And the grouping function can be performed by a moderator without resort to digests. This grouping is overrated anyway: in a sustained discussion, the grouping buys you almost nothing. >PS: there are a number of tools for undigestification if you wish to >use them, complaining that rn doesn't do what you (personally) want is >like saying that your screwdriver doesn't drive nail well. This is not >to say that enhancements aren't welcome, I just don't think they're >*needed*. If you want that kind of analogy, then my rejoinder is that having digests in the news is like having a box whose top is held on with seven wood screws and a nail. It's annoying to have to go looking for a hammer. C. Wingate
weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (06/16/86)
I too dislike digests. Another difficulty with them is that cross-posting
between moderated groups (like mod.{risks,politics.arms-d}) occurs without
any possibility for a marking mechanism to spare readers the repetition.
ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720preece@ccvaxa.UUCP (06/16/86)
> If you want that kind of analogy, then my rejoinder is that having > digests in the news is like having a box whose top is held on with > seven wood screws and a nail. It's annoying to have to go looking for > a hammer. > C. Wingate ---------- The thing is, an intelligent, involved moderator can produce a digest which is more than the sum of its parts. Those who prefer to see the digest as a stream or articles can easily take it part. Those who prefer to have the digest CANNOT build it from the parts. Following on with the analogy, banning digests to avoid using an undigestifier would be like banning tops on boxes because some people might not have the tools to take them off. For what it's worth, we use notes on our machines and we undigestify MOST (but not all) digests fed in from ARPA mailing lists. -- scott preece gould/csd - urbana uucp: ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece arpa: preece@gswd-vms