boozer@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Boozer) (09/04/85)
.. .. .. .. ..
I think that digested news groups are a veary effective format for
some types of news groups. fa.telecom is a good example. I don't read it
on-line. I just send it to the printer, read it at my desk, and file it for
future reference. Printing 1 digest is preferable to print 20 individual
articles.
On arpanet, the newsgroup net.micro.pc in digested as it crosses from USENET
land to ARPA land. I print out each digest and circulate it within the
department/building. There are many neophyte computer users that benefit from
the pass-along digets.
Digested news groups have a place in this world. Not all groups would benefit
from being digested.
Killing digests would be like killing a whale --- senseless!
gab
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------------- \***************************************************/david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) (09/04/85)
In article <5524@fortune.UUCP> boozer@fortune.UUCP (Glenn Boozer) writes: > I just send it to the printer, read it at my desk, and file it for >future reference. ... > I print out each digest and circulate it within the >department/building. There are many neophyte computer users that benefit from >the pass-along digets. Can't you write a tiny piece of software to "digest" each day's messages and print it out? It's easy. Trust me. Sys file: pcdigest:net.micro.pc:F:/usr/spool/outnews/pcdigest Then a shell file: #! /bin/sh # pcdigest.sh -- grab articles from net.micro.pc and digest them cat </dev/null >/tmp/digest$$ for file in `cat /usr/spool/outnews/pcdigest` do ( cat $file ; echo ; echo ----------- ) >>/tmp/digest$$ done lpr /tmp/digest$$ Which, I admit is rather crude as I just thought of it, but the basic idea is there. Similar things can be done if you're on arpa and receive net.micro.pc as info-pc, make your local info-pc address be an alias to a program. You're denying us the full use of rn for those newsgroups. -- --- David Herron --- ARPA-> ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA --- UUCP-> {ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,oddjob}!anlams!ukma!david --- {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!cbosgd!ukma!david Hackin's in me blood. My mother was known as Miss Hacker before she married!
control@almsa-1 (William Martin) (09/05/85)
Just another vote to support what the original poster said. I, too, like digests. I print a lot of them, circulating them to various other people or shipping them on paper to various non-computer-equipped people. The digest format has been around since the mid-to-late '70s in ARPA environments. It has been proven to work well in that electronic-mail- oriented environment. Maybe the news-oriented environment of USENET differs enough to counteract this experience, but I doubt it. "YES!" to digests! Will