[net.news] Does the net think...?

malcolm@west44.UUCP (Malcolm Shute.) (11/02/84)

Does the net think  that  there  is  a  need  for  the  following
facility in read-news programs:

Every so often (e.g. each time I call upon  my  chosen  read-news
program),  I  will  be  re-subscribed to a newsgroup from which I
have  previously  unsubscribed.  When  I  finally  come  to  that
newsgroup,  I can of course unsubscribe from it again. (The read-
news program would have to remember the group  to  which  it  did
this  last, so that it would do it to the next group in the cycle
on the next occassion).

So what's the point of it all?

When there is too much news to read (e.g. when  I  first  started
reading  the news, and there was a backlog of articles waiting to
be read), I reduced my reading time by unsubscribing  from  those
groups with which I thought I did not really want to bother. As a
consequence, I have never heard anything from those groups since.
It  would  be nice if the system occassionally gave me the chance
to reconsider my original decision.

Well how looney is this idea? Does it have anything  constructive
to  be  said  for  it?  Or  shall I return to read-only mode with
network news?

barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (11/03/84)

This will do it:

	sed "s/!/:/" <~/.newsrc >~/.newsrc.new
	rm ~/.newsrc;
	mv ~/.newsrc.new ~/.newsrc
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar

julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) (11/04/84)

No it isn't looney. I periodically have to go through  .newsrc  and
change "!"s into ":"s so I can look at things.  though actually I
almost invariably quickly unsubscribe again, and the software here
searches for the next available article in such a ng the long way.
  The alternative of using -x and a specific -n in the readnews
command has the disadvantage of not remembering what you do read in
that session, nor take account of any articles still on disk that you
have read already.  btw, what is "-x" useful for apart from this?
		Julian Davies
		deepthot!julian

dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (11/08/84)

In article <410@deepthot.UUCP> julian@deepthot.UUCP (Julian Davies) writes:
|| No it isn't looney. I periodically have to go through  .newsrc  and
|| change "!"s into ":"s so I can look at things.  though actually I
|| almost invariably quickly unsubscribe again, and the software here
|| searches for the next available article in such a ng the long way.

If you use "rn", it becomes easy to resubscribe without having
to edit your .newsrc by hand - just type 'g' followed by the
newsgroup you want.

||   The alternative of using -x and a specific -n in the readnews
|| command has the disadvantage of not remembering what you do read in
|| that session, nor take account of any articles still on disk that you
|| have read already.  btw, what is "-x" useful for apart from this?

I use it to reread an article I know I've seen before, which is recent
(with the -r flag as well for reverse order). Also, if I want to transmit
and article to another site (e.g., an important locally-generated
article that I'd like to send straight to ihnp4), I use "readnews -xrn"
and use readnews' X command.

Incidentally, rn has some great functionality that many users
may not have explored. Suppose you want to go back and reread
all articles posted recently by Martillo in net.religion.jewish.
You simply type "?Martillo?hrm" and rn will mark as unread (m)
all previously-read (r) articles with "Martillo" anywhere in
the header (h). (Actually, this also gives you articles whose
subject lines refer to Martillo, but you get the idea.) And
if you want to go back and reread all postings on Batman in
net.misc, you type "?Batman?rm".

Dave Sherman
Toronto
-- 
 { allegra cornell decvax ihnp4 linus utzoo }!utcsrgv!dave

dan@rna.UUCP (11/23/84)

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