🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sunday, in article <818631215.21835@thokk.demon.co.uk>
     Malcolm@demon.net "Malcolm Muir" wrote:

..
MM> > MM> The fact that the resulting corruption (the renumbering of articles)
MM> > MM> is not noticed by the majority of users is key here.
..
MM> I have received email telling me of such. As far as I know no one
MM> using our version of Snews uses the article numbers from the
MM> database.

OK, well, if they ever do, I'd be glad to help with a soln
if I'm able.

MM> The fact that some aspect of the database are undocumented are no
MM> different to the fact that Access database format is undocumented.

I don't know enough about Access to pursue that analogy.

MM> > If you still do think this counts as corruption,
MM> > consider a user who saves some batch.txt files,
MM> > rmgroup's a newsgroup, and then unbatches a selection of
MM> > his files.  Has he corrupted the database, in your
MM> > opinion?

I left out a key step, sorry, I was writing in too much haste.
I meant to add addgroup'ing the newsgroup again, before
doing the unbatch.

MM> Unbatch is designed to cater for articles that are not in the main
MM> newsbase. It handles then by placing them in junk. This is the case

Quite so.  I'm sorry, my omission created a red herring
there, I meant the thought experiment to rebuild the
original newsgroup, but with only some of its articles.

MM> regardless of rmgroup'ing a newsgroup. The database is not corrupted
MM> by this action.
MM> 
MM> > Yes:  Snews' own utilities corrupt its database.
MM> 
MM> No it does not.

My opinion also.

MM> 
MM> > No: SnzPrune's actions are conceptually no different
MM> > from that scenario.
MM> 
MM> I beg to disagree. Snews consistantly assigns an article number to an
MM> article and this association is not broken unless the newsgroup is
MM> 'rmgroup'ed. Rmgroup is a deliberate act of deleting the data for a
MM> newsgroup in its entirity.

But the article number is essentially an internal thing,
not visible to the user.  Since it's not mentioned in
the user's documentation, I don't follow why changing
the article numbers, as long as it's done consistently,
and doesn't interfere with the Snews' existing utilities,
can be considered 'corruption'.  An internal modification,
yes, but 'corruption' has overtones that (to me) imply
much more.

Changing the subject slightly, and with a practical intent,
would you consider changing the filenames of the newsbase
to be a 'corruption', even if it were done so that
everything (e.g. 'active') is consistent?

In this group we've recently been discussing the possibility
of doing this, and if it's going to be regarded as
corruption it might be harder to 'sell' to non-techie
users.

--
John Washington