allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) (04/06/88)
Submitted-By: "Brandon S. Allbery" <allbery@ncoast.UUCP> Archive-Name: Administrivia [One change: aeras!nyles is no longer archiving, although aeras!jason is.] This is the first of three messages comprising the monthly Info posting for comp.sources.misc. Hopefully, any questions you have will be answered here; if they are not, send mail to me (allbery@ncoast.UUCP), the moderator. This message is the Welcome! document, which describes my policies and commitments. The second part of this posting is the Index for the newsgroup; archive requests are best handled by specifying the Archive-Name or volume/issue number for the posting, or alternatively my Message-ID. Please do NOT use the article number within the newsgroup: this varies based on lost messages or articles received out of sequence, and is purely local. Note that starting last month the Administrivia (what there is of it) is posted to its correct newsgroup. On the other hand, I use the standard Info notation now, so people who archive the other moderated sources groups should already be able to deal with this. I *did* give you two months' warning! > Introduction < This newsgroup is not for large programs which belong in other sources groups; it is for sources which do not fit elsewhere (for example, MS-DOS and VMS non-game sources) and for the small stuff -- for example, your favorite shell script to set your prompt or etc. -- the little stuff that just doesn't warrant submission to comp.sources.unix, where it'd look a bit silly next to the latest version of Xterm.... As a result, the group will be run in an informal fashion. In general, *anything* will be accepted, but discussion will be routed to comp.sources.d rather than cluttering this newsgroup. This newsgroup isn't expected to be a high-volume one, since the "big" stuff should be sent elsewhere. However, it is to be hoped that people still have the desire to post their favorite prompt generators, integer square root algorithms, etc. (If the last days of net.sources are any indication, they do.) > Why moderated? < The moderated comp.sources.misc replaced the unmoderated net.sources in May 1987. This was done by the Usenet backbone in response to the observed fact that net.sources was largely NON-sources by number of articles. Mail I have received indicates that the majority of people are willing to trade the small delays (mainly caused by network delays in mail; I send stuff out as fast as I get it) for having a source group that isn't full of noise. As stated above, the only reason a submission will be rejected is if it is a non-source. I, as the moderator, am striving to get things out as quickly as possible while not posting non-sources; testing is not done. If it's something that's worth testing, it probably belongs in comp.sources.unix instead. (Send submissions to rs@uunet.UU.NET in that case.) > What sources are posted here? < I will post directly any sources: little stuff like "my favorite dice-roll program" or etc., non-Unix(R) sources, as well as the standard stuff. [Disclaimer: Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.] In particular, I have made arrangements to handle VMS sources, and I have a program to create VMS DCL "shar" files. Please consider sending larger postings to comp.sources.unix, and games to comp.sources.games. *** EXCEPTION *** Since Rich $alz has decided to reject editor sources, I am more than happy to accept them. (This does not mean that you should post fifteen versions of Emacs clones within a week. For that matter, posting Gnu Emacs is probably a bad idea unless you want to pay some hefty phone bills for backbone sites, not to mention ncoast's mail feeds.) > Guidelines for fast processing of submissions < The readers of this newsgroup would prefer that posters follow certain guidelines. Not following these guidelines may result in long delays, since some things *must* be fixed for news to accept the submission, and others fixed so that I can spend time processing submissions rather than responding to flames. ;-) * Do NOT send me uuencoded "arc" files, even of sources. * Please use "shar", "cshar", "bundle", etc. to package files. * PLEASE INCLUDE A Subject: HEADER!!! Certain large postings (e.g. uEmacs) arrived at ncoast sans Subject: line; this requires me to edit the messages and add subject lines for both inews and the archive list. * Please do not address submissions to ncoast!allbery; this has a more direct slowdown effect, as ncoast's mailer takes up to 15 minutes to start up when the mailbox is large. It also requires me to manually edit the headers of the message; the official address "ncoast!sources-misc" uses a filter which does the hard work automatically. * Please do not package binaries and sources in the same submission. Since I must send out the binaries separately, this results in a delay while I break apart the shar and rebuild it, then resubmit the binaries separately. * One way to solve the problem of an announcement not going out the same day as the posting it announces: send the announcement to me UNDER SEPARATE COVER (see the previous guideline) with instructions as to where it should be posted, and I will insure that both go out the same day. The same goes for binaries and/or other material associated with a source; send it under separate cover and tell me what to do with it. > Archiving < Alas, ncoast is cramped for space, so I cannot do archiving. I do, however, add archive headers to posted submissions, suitable for manual or automatic archiving and archive retrieval. The archive Index is posted each month as part of the Welcome! posting. The format of the archive header is: Comp.sources.misc: Volume 2, Issue 45 for submissions, and Comp.sources.misc: Volume 2, Administrivia 2 for administrivia. Each posting also has an Archive-Name, which is a single word of (generally) 6-8 letters which tries to be somewhat descriptive. You may want to use this instead of the volume/issue number. > The Oz Connection < As with the other moderated sources groups, Australia has a sub-moderator to handle the local load; this reduces bills and increases both speed and the chances of your submission actually making it out onto the net. The sub- moderator is john@basser.cs.su.oz.au. > Archive sites < Rick Perry (perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP, perry@vuvaxcom.BITNET) is archiving all of comp.sources.misc and is willing to distribute sources via UUCP or BITNET mail, or via a direct UUCP connection. He is also willing to make tar or cpio tapes. Contact perry@vu-vlsi.UUCP for more information. Jason Winters at Arete Systems (sun!aeras!jason) is archiving comp.sources.misc, as well as the .games and .unix groups. Send mail to sun!aeras!jason for more information. Mike Squires ({ncoast!peng,pitt}!sir-alan!mikes) is archiving both the .misc and .unix groups. Access is via anonymous UUCP, phone number +01 814 333 6728; the login is "pdsrc" and there is no password. An index of archived postings is available in the file /usr/spool/pdsrc/all.subjects. Contact Mike at {ncoast!peng,pitt}!sir-alan!mikes for more information. Rob Marchand is also archiving comp.sources.misc; he will mail sources out, or (last resort) provide UUCP access. He is also archiving sources which appear in comp.os.vms, making him the only "official" VMS archive site. Contact rob@array.UUCP ({utzoo,watmath}!lsuc!array!rob). For European sites, Jamie Watson (mcvax!cernvax!paninfo!jw) is archiving the comp.sources groups; as usual, send email to him for information. Joe Carlson (carlson@llnl-winken.llnl.gov) has set up an archive that is available via anonymous FTP. Only articles from 9/87 on are archived. The archives are stored in subdirectories of /pub/comp.sources.misc by X-Archive header. Also available are comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.games archives, as well as some useful programs like nntp and rn. Contact Joe Carlson for details. (Oh -- for those who don't believe in nameservers, [128.115.14.1] is another name for the site.) Of course, UUNET provides ftp and UUCP (for subscribers) access to archives of all the sources groups. ++Brandon, your friendly neighborhood comp.sources.misc moderator.