north@down.FUN (Stephen C North) (12/21/84)
Toby Robison does not go far enough. Quoted articles are a bad idea, period. It's a drag to read through them and they waste lots of connect time and disk space. They should be banished. What do people think the References and Xref headers are for, anyway? Netnews is a database. Including someone else's article as if I have no possible way of finding it or seeing it again is silly, almost as silly as all those """""line eater bug""""" and .signature lines. But who cares, it's only netnews. Stephen C North
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (12/22/84)
Putting the quotes at the end is a GREAT idea! My complements to Mr. Robison on such an elegantly simple solution! Now, if the software types would just wipe out the "REPLACE LINE" line so it won't show up, or at least move it to preceed the quote to facilitate this, all will be well... Will
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (12/23/84)
If all you're doing is including the text of the article, verbatim, you have no business even including it, at the beginning, end, or anywhere else. Sure, there's a chance the original article hasn't reached the reader yet, but it's pretty remote, and not worth all the extra transmission and reading. The include-text feature is intended for two uses: (1) to remind the reader of the essence of the original article, in case it's been a few days since they read it, and (2) to allow a point-by-point response to the questions or statements made in the original. Both of these uses are even more valid for mail, but can be useful for news as well. If you're going to include text, you have an obligation to edit it down to the bare gist. Often the point you are responding to is made in one or two lines of the original message. If the original message is very short (say 4-5 lines) it's fair to include the whole thing. It is NEVER appropriate to include things like signatures or other text that has nothing to do with what you are adding to the conversation. Most text-including followup commands automatically generate a line that says who posted the original message, which is plenty to tell who said what. Perhaps we should modify the followup commands to refuse to post a followup that contains mostly > lines, for some suitable definition of "mostly"? Maybe they could also generate the following line at the top of the message: Be sure to edit away irrelevent text, like this line. This way, if this line is still there, people know some lummox posted it and will feel free to ignore the message. Mark Horton
allyn@sdcsvax.UUCP (Allyn Fratkin) (12/24/84)
In article <396@down.FUN>, north@down.FUN (Stephen C North) writes: > > What do people think the References and Xref headers are for, anyway? > Netnews is a database. Including someone else's article as if I have > no possible way of finding it or seeing it again is silly, almost as > silly as all those """""line eater bug""""" and .signature lines. That's fine for notes because notes does group your articles according to subject and reply. But, how many of us use notes? News reading programs that I have seen do not allow you to easily look at a previous article given only the Message-ID. It might be nice to be able to do that, but right now, it just isn't possible for most of us. Besides, you still don't address the problem of what to do if the reply arrives before the "base note" (to use notes terms). In notes, you get an "Orphaned response". What do you propose should happen? I think a help for the problem would be to fix postnews to check to make sure the file contents changed before it posts an article. It is bad enough to have to wade through pages of a quoted article, but it is infuriating to wade through the quote to be left with only "*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***". It seems to be very common these days. -- From the virtual mind of Allyn Fratkin sdcsvax!allyn@Nosc UCSD Pascal Project {ucbvax, decvax, ihnp4} U.C. San Diego !sdcsvax!allyn "Generally you don't see that kind of behavior in a major appliance."
haapanen@watdcsu.UUCP (Tom Haapanen [DCS]) (12/26/84)
In article <602@cbosgd.UUCP> mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) writes: >Sure, there's a chance the original article hasn't >reached the reader yet, but it's pretty remote, and not worth all >the extra transmission and reading. It is worthwhile, however, if the original was posted in a different newsgroup, and your reply is going to net.flame, so people can figure out what the h_ll you're talking about... > Be sure to edit away irrelevent text, like this line. Oh yeah? \tom haapanen watmath!watdcsu!haapanen university of waterloo
dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (12/27/84)
As part of the process of installing 2.10.2 news at Waterloo, I modified "postnews" so that when a followup was being posted, it would ask the user if he/she wished to include the original article in the body of the new message. If the user says "no", then it doesn't get included, and they don't have to go to the trouble of editing it out (and for about half of the followups I post, I don't use any of the text of the original). If the user says "yes", they have just been reminded that there is an old article body sitting waiting for them to edit down - particularly useful if they are not using a screen editor and thus won't automatically see the text. Perhaps this is a reasonable method of cutting down on garbage in followups will still providing the ability to include the referenced article wherever appropriate? Now if only rn/Pnews could be convinced to do the same. It goes to the trouble to ask me if I really want to use the editor that I told it to use via an environment variable, presumably in case I feel like using a different editor right at this moment, but doesn't give me a choice of whether the original article is included! Arghh.
guido@boring.UUCP (12/28/84)
In article <858@watcgl.UUCP> dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes: >Now if only rn/Pnews could be convinced to do the same. >[...] doesn't give me a choice of whether the original article is included! >Arghh. Arghh indeed. You must have an upper case only terminal, or a praehistoric version of rn. The official rn does NOT include the article when you followup with 'f', it only includes this if you type 'F'. Same for 'r' and 'R'. Guido van Rossum, "Stamp Out Readnews" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam guido@mcvax.UUCP
lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) (12/28/84)
In article <858@watcgl.UUCP> dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes: > ... > Now if only rn/Pnews could be convinced to do the same. It goes to the > trouble to ask me if I really want to use the editor that I told it > to use via an environment variable, presumably in case I feel like using > a different editor right at this moment, but doesn't give me a choice > of whether the original article is included! Arghh. With all due respect, may I suggest that this is an inaccurate observation? I understand that the rn manual entry is a wee bit overwhelming, but the help facility has the following line: f,F Submit a followup article (F = include this article). With regard to the editor question (or should that have been the editor question question...), there are some of us who work multiple systems, and have to use several different editors. Which editor I want to use at the moment depends on which one I've been using most recently. Besides, just on this system, my favorite editor has schizophrenic tendencies, with corresponding name changes. But to each his own. If you don't like the feature, copy Pnews to your private bin directory and comment out the question. That's why it's a shell script. Be sure that NEWSPOSTER points to your own Pnews. If you feel that nobody on your system wants the feature, feel free to comment it out in the public copy. In defense of putting in the feature in the first place I can only say that it is usually much easier to chop out a feature than to add it back in. By the way, this is slightly mis-documented, but if you add %A to the end of your NEWSPOSTER command, Pnews will pass the file name of the current article as the second filename to your editor, so that you can have it in an alternate window, or as an alternate file. Likewise the MAILPOSTER command. Enough--if I say more I shall be rambling. In fact, I probably shouldn't have said the previous sentence. In fact, I probably shouldn't have said the previous sentence. In fact, I probably shouldn't have said the previous sentence. In fact, I probably shouldn't have said the previous sentence. In fact!@%$% Stack overflow in DWIM. rebooting... Larry Wall {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall
ekrell@ucla-cs.UUCP (12/29/84)
In article <858@watcgl.UUCP> dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes: > >Now if only rn/Pnews could be convinced to do the same. It goes to the >trouble to ask me if I really want to use the editor that I told it >to use via an environment variable, presumably in case I feel like using >a different editor right at this moment, but doesn't give me a choice >of whether the original article is included! Arghh. It would be very easy to have Pnews not to ask you for the editor, just comment out a couple of lines. As far as posting followups, rn has two commands: "F" will include the original message and "f" will not. -- Eduardo Krell UCLA Computer Science Department ekrell@ucla-locus.arpa ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!ekrell
thomas@utah-gr.UUCP (Spencer W. Thomas) (12/30/84)
<1281@utah-gr.UUCP> cancelled from rn.
--
=Spencer
({ihnp4,decvax}!utah-cs!thomas, thomas@utah-cs.ARPA)
<<< Silly quote of the week >>>arndt@ttds.UUCP (Arndt Jonasson) (01/05/85)
dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) writes: >Now if only rn/Pnews could be convinced to do the same. It goes to the >trouble to ask me if I really want to use the editor that I told it >to use via an environment variable, presumably in case I feel like using >a different editor right at this moment, but doesn't give me a choice >of whether the original article is included! Arghh. There are two followup commands in rn; f and F. f enters an editor of your choice with the article in the buffer, F does the same, but with the original article included as well. There is an rn option variable to determine how to mark the quoted text (e.g "> "). As for the question about what editor to use, it may seem silly, but the day you want to answer something other than return on that question, you'll probably appreciate it. As a principle, question asking in programs should be kept at a minimum, though. { decvax, philabs } mcvax ! enea ! ttds ! arndt