jmsellens@watmath.UUCP (John M Sellens) (01/05/85)
I was thinking about descriptions of newsgroups a while ago and how to
make it easy for a user to get a description of what a group is for,
while avoiding the problem of giant bitmaps required by having a
low-numbered article never expire.
I took 2.10.2's readr.c and added two new readnews commands, 'w' and
'W' for "what is this group about?". A 'W' will look in the
newsgroup's directory for a file called DESCRIPTION and, if it is
there, will copy it to the user's terminal. My idea was that
DESCRIPTION would typically be the original message sent out announcing
the group. If readnews can't find DESCRIPTION, it will try for a short
description, by looking in the 'newsgroups' file for the line
describing the group (it will read the periodically posted list of
newsgroups). This is what the 'w' command does.
To complete this idea, one would have to add a new control message (I guess)
that could automatically create the DESCRIPTION files. And maybe add
something that, the first time you read a group (could this be determined by
the lack of an entry in your .newsrc ?), would print the DESCRIPTION of the
newsgroup on your terminal.
To do this, I had to remove the existing, undocumented 'w' for 'write'
command (which seemed to be exactly the same as 's'). If anyone is
interested in the diffs (they are pretty simple), I would be happy
to provide them (requests by MAIL only - don't post them). If enough
interest is expressed I will post them.
John M Sellens
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