BAILEY%mordor.draper.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Tom Bailey, C. S. Draper Lab, x2476) (11/01/89)
Hi, everyone. I'm fairly new to this list, although I've been playing
around with NEWS for nearly a year (with NEWS 5.2). It looks like
we will soon be getting significantly more nodes involved and be getting
more interest lists soon (perhaps even a real newsfeed), so I thought
it was time to get serious. :-)
First a few comments about this list:
1) Is it possible to limit the size of archive files? I couldn't fetch
some of them because individual files were bigger than the
LISTESERVer daily quota. From reading the other archives, the
big archive files must contain patches and/or source code.
2) I'd like to see patches as separate files available on the LISTSERVer.
I don't have easy FTP access, so the LISTSERVer is the best way
for me to catch up on things I might have missed.
3) In the archives I saw some discussion about distribution of NEWS (FTP
access, sending 30 VMS_SHAR'ed parts, etc.). Would it be possible
(for example) to have the VMS_SHAR'ed parts as files on the
LISTSERVer? The VMS_SHAR'ed files would only have to be updated
for every major release. Patch files would fill in the gaps.
I have no idea what LISTSERVer policy is on this type of thing, or how hard
these things would be to implement. I even volunteer to help manage these if
there is something that I can do via mail commands. (We only have a CSNET
connection, nothing else.)
I've just applied the 5.9A patches, so here are a few comments about the
DIFF/SLP patches:
1) How about naming the SUMSLP update files using the following convention:
update file for file XXX.YYY is XXX.YYY_SLP, or something similar.
That way there is no ambiguity about what file is to be updated.
(Actually, there wasn't any ambiguity w/ the current way. I just
had to look at the directory listing of [.NEWS_SRC] to see which
files were .C's, which were .H's, etc. when I was creating a
command procedure to apply all the updates. This way all the
information is self contained and obvious.)
2) (Mostly to Geoff) If new NEWS versions are going to be incremental
patches applied to the latest major version, then could we have
the incremental version included in the module number for incrementally
patched files (i.e., 5.9A for the files that got patched, or all
files)? That would make it a lot easier to tell which version
of the source code all of the modules are.
Comments anyone?
Now to offer something. We are running PMDF for our CSNET connection.
We currently use DELIVER and PMDF aliases to get interest list mail into a NEWS
digestable format. We are currently working on a PMDF NEWS channel. The
idea is that the NEWS channel would handle all non-batch messages (mostly
Internet interest lists). Incoming messages would be massaged and mailed
to the NEWSMGR account to be added on the next NEWSSKIM run.
I have written some DCL and TPU code for the PMDF MASTER.COM to call, but
our postmaster has been too busy to add another channel to the PMDF tables.
So, if anyone wants to try it, send me a message and I'll send back
the files in VMS_SHAR format.
Tom Bailey
C. S. Draper Lab
bailey@mordor.draper.com
tlb1431@draper.com