comparc@twwells.uucp (comp.archives) (12/20/88)
Ok, this is the last comp.archives digest. The response to my request
have easily convinced me that the digest format is a mistake.
My reasons for digesting are two:
1) I receive a fair amount of mail directed to comp-archives-
request which ought to be posted, and other stuff which
also should be posted. Little of this, I feel, really
needs to get its own message; thus they get put into what
is more-or-less a digest.
2) I had earlier been posting messages and then replying to
them; I was asked to put the replies in the message I was
responding to. However, I feel really uneasy about
modifying any part of a message that is not mine, unless
the context is one where this is expected. A digested
form is one such.
I guess I'll have to live with my uneasiness.
These are insufficient, as compared to the reasons given to me by the
anti-digesters.
The rest of this digest contains nothing but reasons why one
shouldn't digest. I'm only posting these for your edification and
enlightenment; unless I get some *very* good reasons for continuing
digesting, I'm going to consider this subject closed.
--------
From: rsalz@pineapple.bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 88 02:22:10 EST
Message-Id: <8812180722.AA01435@papaya.bbn.com>
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation
Basic reason against digests is that it is much too hard for
me to save one point and come back to it later. If I don't
care about UUCP access I can't put /uucp/ in my kill file,
I can't grep through Subject lines to pull out interesting
articles, etc.
If things are digested, I'm pretty much forced to read all
parts of all digests, and that's unfair.
Thanks for reconsidering; I'd have responded the first time
if I realized the importance of doing it.
/rich $alz
--
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
--------
From: blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 88 03:54:23 PST
Message-Id: <8812181154.AA11296@skat.usc.edu>
Organization: USC AIS, Los Angeles
Some of the reasones I dislike the digest format (decending order of
importance):
Many features of rn are useless:
killing by subject, author, etc.
searching ditto
"thread" following
Marking indivdual articles
saving ditto
Reading must be done in digest-sized quantum.
Subject on replies are bogus. (see above)
Reply only to message author is difficult.
Cross-posting is imposible.
Reply including is harder due to more junk to edit out.
Header information is lost.
Additional delay for digest filling.
Extra bytes in digest header.
Advantages:
Extra inodes and disk block rounding.
A few extra bytes in individual headers, that are compressed well when
messages are grouped.
--
Bob Larson Arpa: Blarson@Ecla.Usc.Edu blarson@skat.usc.edu
Uucp: {sdcrdcf,cit-vax}!oberon!skat!blarson
Prime mailing list: info-prime-request%ais1@ecla.usc.edu
oberon!ais1!info-prime-request
--------
From: rsalz@pineapple.bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 88 11:40:11 EST
Message-Id: <8812181640.AA02715@papaya.bbn.com>
Organization: BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation
Another argument against digests: it's a real pain in the ass
to reply to a specific question a specific poster asked. E.g.,
the guy who wanted to know about archive servers. I would
drop him a line saying "check out netlib; it does some things,
or perhaps write your own MMDF channel" but it's too much pain;
the Reply command goes right to you, with a useless subject.
/rich $alz
--
Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net.
--------
From: chip@vector.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal)
Date: 18 Dec 88 23:00:56 CST (Sun)
Message-Id: <8812182300.AA02052@vector.UUCP>
Organization: Dallas Semiconductor
In article <253@twwells.uucp> you write:
>Ok, all of those out there
>who don't want me using a digest: give me reasons. Then I'll think
>about it.
Because most USENET software does not handle digests well. What if I
want to reply to the author of a message? Digests break the "r" key.
What if I want to save a particular message? Digests break the "s" key.
I can followup, but the subject will be wrong.
I gateway the TELECOM digest into comp.dcom.telecom. The motivation to
post individual messages rather than digests was so strong that I wrote
a program to break up the digests into individual messages. To me, it
seems that digiestifying the comp.archives messages is a large step
backwards.
---
Chip Rosenthal chip@vector.UUCP | Choke me in the shallow water
Dallas Semiconductor 214-450-5337 | before I get too deep.
--------
From: powell@ole.UUCP (Gary Powell)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 88 08:41:16 PST
Message-Id: <8812191641.AA01398@ole.UUCP>
Organization: Seattle Silicon Corporation, Bellevue, WA.
1) Digest format does not allow me to 'n' past all the articles which
do not interest me.
2) Digest format does not allow for an "=" for a preview and 'c' to catch
up the rest.
3) Digest format does not allow me to save individual articles without a lot
of cutting and pasting. (Why should I have to undo the work you did ?)
In summary I quit reading comp.sys.sun until they switched back from digest
format. Digest format is a make work idea, You have to paste the stuff
together I want it appart. It offers no benefits to the reader and many
disadvantages.
--
_Q _Q _Q _Q _Q_Q _Q _Q _Q
/_\) /_\) /_\) /_\)/_/\\) /_\) /_\) Gary Powell /_\)
_O|/O_O|/O__O|/O___O|/O_OO|/O__O|/O__O|/O__________________________________O|/O_
UUCP!uw-beaver!tikal!ole!powell Seattle Silicon Corp. (206) 828-4422
--------
From: kirk@ico.isc.com (Kirk Webb)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 88 08:04:17 mst
Message-Id: <8812191504.AA11292@ico.ISC.COM>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Boulder CO
Please do not digest articles people send in.
The reasons:
1) It is harder to reply to the author of an individual message.
2) It is harder to save an individual message without saving the whole
digest and then editing it.
3) Running a separate undigestifier is a nuisance.
4) It is hard to recognize individual messages in the digest format you
are using.
5) It is ridiculous to include shell archives that start in the middle of
digests. Will there be other articles after the shar? Without an
undigestifier, I must skip through the whole shar to see what is after
it.
6) You are forcing people to read the whole digest in the order that you
assemble it. Some people may wish to scan the subject lines and read
it in a different order.
7) There is no benefit to digesting, so why bother?
--------
From: John.Myers@PIE8.PIE.CS.CMU.EDU
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 1988 12:57-EDT
Message-Id: <598557457/John.Myers@PIE8.PIE.CS.CMU.EDU>
Please do not use a digest format. It defeats thread-following, KILL
files, and other features of intelligent news reading programs.
--
_.John G. Myers Internet: John.Myers@cs.cmu.edu
LoseNet: ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up
"The datefield parameter is a six byte, null-terminated string encoding the
UNIX date in base 64." -- Andrew Message System documentation.
--------
From: serge@euler.berkeley.edu (serge)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 88 15:48:36 PST
Message-Id: <8812192348.AA03778@euler.berkeley.edu>
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
In article <253@twwells.uucp> you write:
>Ok, all of those out there who don't want me using a digest: give me
>reasons.
It wastes your time and ours (e.g. we can use kill files in rn, it's
harder to save individual articles, etc.).
A similar discussion recently occurred in comp.sys.sun, and the
result was that mail to the newsgroup became undigestified (but
still moderated), while mail to individuals remained as digests.
--------
From: lwall@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Larry Wall)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 88 17:46:33 PST
Message-Id: <8812200146.AA05254@devvax.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
In article <253@twwells.uucp> you write:
: I spoke too soon! Rich Salz sent, in quivering capital letters, no
: less, a request that I don't use a digest. Ok, all of those out there
: who don't want me using a digest: give me reasons. Then I'll think
: about it.
Well, for one, I had to delete over 700 lines to get that quote above.
Most of the news system is built to work on the granularity of one message
per article. In particular, rn can do many nice things if every message
has it's own article--replying to the original poster, killing subject
threads that are not interesting, munging the header to show just those header
lines desired by the user (and highlighted the way he wants), searching for
articles from a particular person or about a particular subject, quoting
articles (as in the above), saving a particular article (very important)
or running it through a filter, forwarding a particular article to somebody
who needs to see it, and so on. Many people simply refuse to read newsgroups
that come out in digest form.
For instance, suppose you post a digest containing two shar scripts. I can't
run it through unshar without editing the digest. If they come out as
separate articles, no problem.
For these and other reasons, comp.sys.sun just changed from digest form to
to undigested. Actually, they did something clever--they post the undigested
articles to Usenet, and mail digests to Internet mailing lists. People who
want the digested form can join the mailing list, and everyone else is
insanely happy with undigested articles.
In general, I think you'll find that the people who want it in digests want
it kinda weakly, and people who want individual articles want it VERY STRONGLY.
Larry
--------
From: david@emerald.UUCP (David Kuder)
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 88 11:19:08 PST
Message-Id: <8812191919.AA07449@emerald.indetech.uucp>
Organization: Independence Technologies, Inc. Fremont, CA
In article <253@twwells.uucp> you write:
>I spoke too soon! Rich Salz sent, in quivering capital letters, no
>less, a request that I don't use a digest. Ok, all of those out there
>who don't want me using a digest: give me reasons. Then I'll think
>about it.
The biggest reason for not digesting is to avoid the problems news
reading programs have with them. Rn likes to follow threads of discussion
by using "Subject:" lines. In a moderated group this can be a big win
because the moderator can force new subject lines when the topic drifts
out of the current thread or really belongs in some other existing thread.
I understand that folks actually receiving this as mail may prefer the
digest form but even in this group the volume really hasn't seemed high
enough to swamp anybodies mail box (your own excepted :-).
Keep up the good work. I hope that as people see what is available and
where they will be able to avoid duplication of effort. So far the area
that seems to require effort on the part of good net citizens is more
uucp or mail access for those of us who cannot ftp.
--
David A. Kuder {sun,umix,pacbell}!indetech!david
Independence Technologies
42705 Lawrence Place FAX: 415 438-2034
Fremont, CA 94538 Voice: 415 438-2003
--------
End of the last comp.archives digest
---
Bill
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