gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) (09/27/89)
Philip A. Naecker <pan%propress.COM@murtoa.cs.mu.oz> writes: >> This is probably worth a few paragraphs explaining how NEWS works and why >> topic/reply systems are very difficult under the USENET system. > >It seems to me, a new user of NEWS (thanks, Geoff!) that what is missing in >constructing the backward linked list are two additional items: a unique >"conversation identifier" (as opposed to the current news-item number) and >some sort of timestamp (perhaps imperfect, given the difficulty of such >things). I.e., if a new RFC were added that specified a "conversation number" >(perhaps to be an extension added to the original message identifier) then >would that not enable us to create real conversation threads (modulo the >difficulties associated with timestamps). Yep - a conversation id would help - but I doubt that it would get into a revised RFC on the basis that local software can derive this from the backward pointers (and indeed this is the case). I should perhaps qualify my earlier statements on this topic/reply issue by saying that NEWS V5.8 did introduce two new fields into the item descriptor records which are intended to hold the conversation identifier and the sequence number within the conversation. These two fields are used as the third key of the item file. It is intended that at somepoint NEWS will include conversation streaming using these two fields - to date I have not had the time to get past this data definition! Geoff Huston