rcodi@yabbie.oz (Ian Donaldson) (05/16/86)
I am running news V2.10.3, and would like to see the following
options added to the system:
1: a "B" command for vnews and readnews, that marks an article
as "boring", and causes all followups to be suppressed
from the "y/n" answering sequences.
If you didn't like the original article, then there's obviously no
sense in reading the followups (in most cases). I'm not suggesting
that the "n" response to an article should be used to mark it boring,
but a totally new command instead.
To implement this could be a bit tricky. There is a "References:" field
in the header that could do as a start. You would need to have another
file in each users' home directory (say, "~/.boringnews"), that contains
the article ID's that are boring. When checknews/readnews/vnews
checks your .newsrc file, it would also need to check the .boringnews
file to reject display of all articles that reference artcle numbers
in the .boringnews file.
The .boringnews file would be of similar structure to the history file,
and would need to have article numbers automatically "expired" after
a certain time (say 3 weeks), so that it doesn't end up growing.
2: a way of "checknews" reporting that there is important LOCAL news
rather than just news.
It could say:
"There is local news." - if there is ANY local news
or:
"There is network news." - if there is ANY news at all
How often have you posted news to your machine that people have not
read because "Oh gee, I just haven't got time to wade through all
the network news today", resulting in your important local news not
being read until too late.
You could even make it smart:
"There is a bit of local news."
"There is some very important local news."
"There is a lot of local news."
"There is humungous amount of network news."
Of course, adding these features would tend to slow down
checknews, as it has to look around a bit more, instead of
just giving up when it knows the answer.
3: a way of seeing the subject-lines in a batch at the start of
each newsgroup - much the same way that digests do now, so
you can skip reading the entire newsgroup if its all not
very interesting.
(perhaps also a command that marks all such articles as boring - see above)
Yes I know that you can use: readnews -p | grep Subject
but this is not quite the desired effect.
If anybody has thoughts on these matters I'm sure many people would
be interested to hear them. It might reduce your news reading time
from 1 hour/day, to 15 mins?
(ps: I haven't implemented any of this -- yet)
Ian Donaldson
ACSnet: rcodi@yabbie UUCP: ...!siesmo!munnari!yabbie.rmit.oz!rcodi
CSNET: rcodi@yabbie.rmit.oz ARPA: rcodi%yabbie.rmit.oz@seismo
BITNET: rcodi%yabbie.rmit.oz@CSNET-RELAY
ISD: + 61 3 660 2619, STD: (03) 660 2619 (1pm-11:59pm weekdays)
PAPER: Dept of Communication & Electronic Engineering,
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,
Latrobe St, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
MORSE: .-. -.-. --- -.. .. @ -.-- .- -... -... .. . (yes - it IS right! :-)
Dpage@ulowell.UUCP (Bob Page) (05/19/86)
In article <229@yabbie.oz> rcodi@yabbie.oz (Ian Donaldson) writes: >I am running news V2.10.3, and would like to see the following >options added to the system: > >1: a "B" command for vnews and readnews, that marks an article > as "boring", and causes all followups to be suppressed > from the "y/n" answering sequences. Use the 'K' or 'k' commands in rn. 'k' acts like your 'B', and 'K' means "I don't EVER want to see this subject." >2: a way of "checknews" reporting that there is important LOCAL news > rather than just news. Use rn and put your local news at the top of your .newsrc -- rn will print the number of messages in the first five newsgroups. >3: a way of seeing the subject-lines in a batch at the start of > each newsgroup - much the same way that digests do now, so > you can skip reading the entire newsgroup if its all not > very interesting. Use the '=' command of rn to see all subject lines, and the 'c' command to catch up (don't read them). >(ps: I haven't implemented any of this -- yet) No need to! ..Bob -- UUCP: wanginst!ulowell!page Bob Page ARPA: page@ulowell.CSNET U of Lowell CS Dept VOX: +1 617 452 5000 x2233 Lowell MA 01854 USA