nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (10/27/89)
I'm thinking of creating a NNTP client for the PC. If I were to port pcrrn to KA9Q's TCP/IP package, that would leave the user with no small problem. They would either have to keep transferring their .newsrc to a local scratch floppy and back again, or else they would have to drag a floppy with them wherever they would like to read news. Is there anyone out there who's addressing the problem of running a NNTP client on a machine with no local storage? The obvious solution is to provide for user authentication, and storage and retrieval and possibly manipulation of the .newsrc file. A more (or less :-) drastic solution is to create a new protocol, the NNRP, Net News Reading Protocol. -- --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee. A recession now appears more than 2 years away -- John D. Mathon, 4 Oct 1989.
amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/28/89)
In article <NELSON.89Oct26150644@image.clarkson.edu>, nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) writes: > Is there anyone out there who's addressing the problem of running a > NNTP client on a machine with no local storage? > > The obvious solution is to provide for user authentication, and storage > and retrieval and possibly manipulation of the .newsrc file. > > A more (or less :-) drastic solution is to create a new protocol, the NNRP, > Net News Reading Protocol. > -- > --russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) > Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee. > A recession now appears more than 2 years away -- John D. Mathon, 4 Oct 1989. The easiest thing I can think of off the top of my head is to prompt for a user name and password for your NNTP host and use FTP to gleep the user's .newsrc, and then put it back when you are done. Writing a little captive FTP client shouldn't be too hard, and is certainly easier than doing authentication locally on the PC. The basic flow of control would be: Prompt for user name & password Use these to FTP the .newsrc file. open your NNTP connection and read news FTP the .newsrc back. The only problem is that if someone else is reading news from the same account at the same time, one of the people is going to be annoyed :-). -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com>
brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (10/28/89)
Once you have user identification at the NNTP level (document forthcoming, in my copious free time, heh heh heh), you could have the server simply maintain the .newsrc information - you don't need the file or its data at all in the newsreader, since the purpose of the .newsrc file is to provide a list of groups subscribed to, and the articles in that group which have already been presented to the user. Thus someone could, if they wish, simply have the NEXT and GROUPS commands respond as filtered by the user's subscription and reading experience as recorded by the server. In today's world of high-power workstations, I don't think that's efficient use of the server, but it's an implementation question that is site-configurable. It would also allow real easy measurement of readership. And it would reduce the size of simple newsreader programs. - Brian
amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/29/89)
In article <10082@ucsd.Edu>, brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes: > Once you have user identification at the NNTP level (document forthcoming, > in my copious free time, heh heh heh), OK, where do we send our nickels for the Brian Kantor Free Time Fund? Or maybe we could make donations directly in caffeine... :-). -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> -- "If your application does not run correctly, do not blame the operating system." -- Geoffrey James, _The_Zen_of_Programming
amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (10/29/89)
In article <10082@ucsd.Edu>, brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes: > [...] > > Thus someone could, if they wish, simply have the NEXT and GROUPS > commands respond as filtered by the user's subscription and reading > experience as recorded by the server. > > In today's world of high-power workstations, I don't think that's > efficient use of the server, but it's an implementation question that > is site-configurable. Hmm. It's a point, I suppose, but I get bad vibes from having the server maintain the per-user read history. > It would also allow real easy measurement of readership. True. > And it would reduce the size of simple newsreader programs. > - Brian Hmm again. From what I've seen, newsreaders are getting more complex, not simpler. I mean, with NN, rn, GNUS, and so on, newsreaders seem to be heading more toward "NNTP peer" status. And along with that, tranditionally readeresque functions are finding their way into news transfer software (for instance, Brad's "magic sys file" idea). -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> -- "If your application does not run correctly, do not blame the operating system." -- Geoffrey James, _The_Zen_of_Programming
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (10/29/89)
In article <10082@ucsd.Edu> brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes:
In today's world of high-power workstations, I don't think that's
efficient use of the server, but it's an implementation question that
is site-configurable.
Every undergrad at Clarkson gets a computer. It's a Z-248, a 8 Mhz, 0
wait state, 512K memory, 360K floppy, 1.2 Meg floppy running MS-LOSS.
I'm going to try to convince our administration to network these
machines. In order to do this, I need to show them that the students
are going to be able to *do* something with them. One of these
"killer apps" is going to be netnews. Unless a student can sit down
at a PC (not necessarily their own personal machine) and read news, I
can't see how it will be acceptable.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu])
Live up to the light thou hast, and more will be granted thee.
A recession now appears more than 2 years away -- John D. Mathon, 4 Oct 1989.brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) (10/30/89)
In article <1516@intercon.com> amanda@intercon.com (Amanda Walker) writes: >Hmm again. From what I've seen, newsreaders are getting more complex, not >simpler. I mean, with NN, rn, GNUS, and so on, newsreaders seem to be heading >more toward "NNTP peer" status. Well, for the record, I think the right thing to do in newsreading is for incoming news to be stuffed into some sort of a relational database with some sort of natural-language analysis routines, and then to allow the user some sort of "medline"-like ability to retrieve articles based on ad-hoc combinations of author, date, subject, keywords, hatsize, and phase of the moon. Of course, that would require lots of on-line storage, so you would want multi-gig optical storage so that you could keep the worthwile newsgroups (yeah, both of them) on line forever. Several of us have been blue-skying about building that, but short of paying for another ingres license and/or writing a whole bunch of crufty code, it isn't going to be developed here anytime soon. Unless we find a bunch of religiously-crazed graduate students. Clearly something like this would require close coupling of the news servers and readers, so we'd need a whole new protocol for constructing and presenting queries across the network. A Network News Reading Protocol, as I think someone recently proposed calling it. Oh wow! I get to write ANOTHER RFC. Maybe. - Brian