BILL@ENGVAX.SCG.HAC.COM ("Bill D. Consoli") (06/01/87)
If the opinion of someone who has never submitted to info-vax (but is a faithful reader) bears any merit, then I urge those powers that be to forget that such a beast called *digest format* even exists. Jim Murawski said >it's a real pain to read and that's putting it mildly. If you want to extract an article, you wind up with the whole digest since it's all one message. Then you get to wade through the extracted file to get the article you wanted. And if you're reading the digest and you come to an article of COMPLETELY no interest to you, you can't just skip past it because (again) it's all one message and there may be articles following which ARE of interest. I believe there was a defense of *digest* which said that digest prevents duplicate messages and long header pages. This it does, but I don't see either of these as being problems since MAIL is made the American Way and allows you freedom of choice. In the occasional circumstance that there is a duplicate message, it's usually quite easy to recognize and say "Oh I remember this one" and then delete it. No mess, no hassle. And as for long header pages, nobody reads those, so just keep hitting return past them (usually no more than one page). It's kind of relaxing sometimes. I hear the voices of digest defenders out there saying "well why don't you >just keep hitting return past them when you encounter >an article of COMPLETELY no interest to you in the digest format?" To this I respond that the header is >usually no more than one page while >>an article of COMPLETELY no interest can be many many more (especially if it includes some code). So please, no digest format. For this great favor I thank you in advance. Sincerely, Bill D. Consoli "...Sometimes you hate it Hughes Aircraft Company Sometimes you love it bill@engvax.scg.hac.com Sometimes you don't know bill%engvax@oberon.usc.edu What to think of it..." (I sit at the desk next to Kevin Carosso)
tedcrane@batcomputer.UUCP (06/05/87)
In article <8706031009.AA19638@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> BILL@ENGVAX.SCG.HAC.COM ("Bill D. Consoli") writes: >I believe there was a defense of *digest* which said that digest prevents >duplicate messages and long header pages. This it does, but I don't see either Nope. In the last few digests I was unfortunately enough to have to wade through, there were duplicate articles, i.e., two copies of the exact same article text in the same digest. I also suspect there were duplicates appearing in more than one digest. No, I don't like digests.