ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (ajs) (08/14/85)
Regarding "orphaned responses" from HP: > Posting-Version: notesfiles > From: Anonymous@hpfcla.UUCP (Anonymous) > Subject: Re: Orphaned Response > Organization: Hewlett-Packard - Fort Collins, CO My apologies for any such articles you see. HP uses notes in a big way, on over 100 systems. For unknown reasons, our gateway generates "orphans" to the news side more than it should. Please bear with us until such time as we distribute internally a better version of notes (and the gateway software). As you can imagine, it is not trivial to make fixes to large software packages, and get new versions distributed. > Whoever designed this misbegotten abortion of a news system (hint: > "notes") should be taken out and maimed. Now, that is unfair and uncalled for. You see things on the news side which never bother us on the notes side -- and vice versa, but you are not aware of that. Having used both systems a great deal, I can attest that notes is the *better* human interface by far, certainly the software of choice. Both news and notes have bugs and shortcomings, obviously different ones. Shall I flame at various posters every time something annoying (but acceptable with news) shows up on the notes side? For example, take the habit of quoting whole articles into responses, just because news doesn't tie responses to "basenotes" (as notes does). Or, consider the habit of cross-posting to many newsgroups at once. On the notes side, such articles show up in each different notesfile (and consume redundant disc space). Why? Because a feature was added to news at some point, but not to notes. That doesn't necessarily make notes inferior, just *different*. How about a little peaceful co- existence? Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado {ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43"
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (08/19/85)
> For unknown reasons, our gateway generates "orphans" to the news side > more than it should. It shouldn't generate *any* orphans. Like it or not, netnews is a datagram service. Any news software which can't deal with duplicated, missing, or out-of-sequence articles is behaving incorrectly. > ...take the habit of quoting whole articles into responses, just because > news doesn't tie responses to "basenotes" (as notes does). The habit of quoting whole articles has nothing to do with the way news and notes present articles. Quoting the relevant bits of articles makes for better responses even if you can get at the article being replied to (which you can do in "vnews", as well). A reply is tied visually to the point to which it's replying; a split-screen display of the original and the reply leaves it up to the user to tie the two together. The inclusion of whole articles when it's not necessary is the result of laziness, pure and simple. > Or, consider the habit of cross-posting to many newsgroups at once. On > the notes side, such articles show up in each different notesfile (and > consume redundant disc space). Why? Because a feature was added to > news at some point, but not to notes. That doesn't necessarily make > notes inferior, just *different*. Both the Orphaned Response problem, and the cross-posting problem, are problems which can be fixed by improving "notes"; I believe versions of notes which fix these already exist. If this is the case, then versions of notes which don't fix them are definitely inferior. Guy Harris
smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (08/19/85)
> Or, consider the habit of cross-posting to many newsgroups at once. On > the notes side, such articles show up in each different notesfile (and > consume redundant disc space). Why? Because a feature was added to > news at some point, but not to notes. This is a common misconception, that cross-posting, especially as implemented by links, was a feature added to news at some late date. Not true -- it was in the very first pre-prototype implementation (a shell script!), and has been present ever since.