🚀 go-pugleaf

I'm working on a new netnews.  It is not ready.  It is taking a lot longer
that it should.  I hope to have a rough version running locally this week.

Initially, the major new features will be:

1)  No more .bitfile, .uindex, or .nindex.  Everyone has a .newsrc file in
their home directory which contains a list of the articles they've already
read.  This will allow skipping articles and coming back to them later:
random-access.  The same interfaces are around:  /bin/mail, msgs, and print.
The -c option still works in the same way, but I'm beginning work on an
improved interface with the Berkeley Mail program so that netnews will know
which articles were looked at during Mail.

2)  Much faster.

3)  New article format.  Looks like a letter.

4)  Expiration dates.  The "expire" program just goes around and cancels
all articles whose expiration dates are older than the current date.

5)  There are directories for each newsgroup in the spool directory and
all the articles have sequentially numbered filenames in their directories.
This system is compatible with the MH news system.

6)  The netnews command is split into two commands:  inews, which inserts
news, and readnews.

7)  Less locking!

There are subtle changes, too numerous to mention here.

As a reply to somebody's article last week suggesting that ucbvax isn't
running a vanilla netnews:  It is running a vanilla netnews.  Also, the
current netnews doesn't allow forwarding.  That is, if a system receives
an article that it doesn't subscribe to, it will just ignore it.  In the
new netnews, the default will be to forward all articles even if there is
no local interest but via a compile option a site may choose to run it the
old way to restrict traffic.

I'll try to keep you posted on late-breaking developments.

	Matt Glickman
	(ucbvax!Onyx:glickman)