bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (10/21/88)
A few weeks ago, Masanobu UMEDA (umerin%flab.flab.Fujitsu.JUNET@uunet.uu.NET) announced the creation of a mailing list called info-gnus, that would discuss the GNUS news reader software for GNU Emacs. The mailing list was already well populated with users of GNUS, many from Japan, where GNUs originated. As is customary, a newsgroup was created (gnu.emacs.gnus) and gatewayed with that mailing list shortly thereafter. Then we parochial English-only (or at least non-Japanese - there was at least one comment from Sweden, I think) speakers noticed that there was discussion on that mailing list in Japanese, using whatever character set they use in Japan. This was hardly surprising, since the list is quartered in Japan and many of its subscribers are Japanese. However, the displayed result looked like line noise to us, much as the spoken language is strange to the western ear. It seemed A Bad Idea (unhelpful and confusing) to carry the Japanese language part of the mailing list discussion on the largely non-Japanese speaking newsgroup. Another mailing list, info-gnus-english@cis.ohio-state.edu, has been created, and connected with gnu.emacs.gnus. The link between info-gnus and gnu.emacs.gnus has been broken. One subscriber to info-gnus-english is info-gnus - that is to say, info-gnus-english/ gnu.emacs.gnus (same thing) is collectively a proper subset of the main info-gnus mailing list. Got that? It took me a while, too :-) We will probably only see discussion in the English language on the subset list/group, but subscribers to the main list will be treated to the full spectrum of discussion - that is, both English and Japanese. We have been assured that important announcements, etc. about GNUS will be forwarded (in English) to info-gnus-english/gnu.emacs.gnus, so we won't miss anything of that sort. Those non-Japanese speakers who are currently subscribed to info-gnus and who cannot manage to get gnu.emacs.gnus are invited to request subscription of info-gnus-english-request@cis.ohio-state.edu, and similarly unsubscribe to the main info-gnus list. Now, let's see if/how this works. It's a big, weird world we work in, isn't it? -=- Zippy sez, --Bob Used staples are good with SOY SAUCE!