mclure (03/09/83)
#N:sri-unix:8200011:000:874 sri-unix!mclure Dec 10 05:08:00 1982 I think the basic problem is this: z wants to read digests even if the same contents are available in a net.foo group. sjb sees this as a redundancy wherein the messages are sent twice everywhere on the net that receives fa.foo, clearly a waste of resources, and also as a further resource eater of .newsrc space. The fact that many fa.foo groups had been inactive for a long time because Berkeley had turned them off is somewhat irrelevant because any Arpanet site could have gatewayed them with minimal effort. I guess cca was doing this? So the question is, do we want to allow digests and the resultant duplication of data transmission as a convenience for people who prefer digest format to individual message format? I say no because that is what such things as notes are for. Digests are a hold-over from the overloaded central Arpanet mail-system-site. Stuart