🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thursday, in article <832848018snz@dsl.co.uk>
     bhk@dsl.co.uk "Brian {Hamilton Kelly}" wrote:

BK> Getting back to the wishlist for SNews, I'd like to see better support
BK> for multiple users.  It's already been acknowledged that snzprune has
BK> difficulty with multiple .NRC files for multiple users (does that
BK> restriction still apply?).

0.1 didn't so much have difficulty as tell such users to go
off and get a life (or better still, separate PCs).  ;-)
In other words, it wasn't designed to support multiple .nrc
files, and I'd failed to realise that this would be of
importance for a significant number of people.

0.2 has no such problem.  I think it's been around for
over 6 months.  Of course it can't preserve an article
when one user wants to delete it and the other wants to
keep it!  But for disjoint readers or ones that are
relaxed and cooperative it should be adequate.

0.3 is better still, in that you can mark an article
for deletion but not have it deleted until it's older than
a certain number of days.

..
BK> matter how few newsgroups any particular user *wants* to read, sie is

</tolerance>
What are all these 'sie's spattered throughout your posting?
PC still stands for Personal Computer in my book, and showing
respect for people of different gender, race, hair colour,
limb count, IQ, tax coding, etc isn't assisted by twee neologisms.
'He' has been a well-understood generic term for centuries.
</rant> <tolerance>

BK> So I'd like to see some mechanism whereby a user only sees those
BK> newsgroups that sie's specifically registered for (like full grown-up
BK> newsreaders on mainframes!).  The .NRC file should only track reading in

So I think you're proposing each .nrc file should include
a list of personal newsgroups (at present, if nothing's
been read in a newsgroup then that n/grp doesn't appear
in the .nrc file).  Sounds feasible, but I can't help
feeling that these kind of ideas take Snews rather
further than its designer intended _Simple_ News to
go.  My personal view is that a lot of tidying up internally
is needed before bolting on major additions, else it will be
hard to maintain.

BK> those newsgroups.  If sie wants to register for some additional
BK> newsgroups, then sie should be permitted to see the complete list of
BK> newsgroups taken at the site (perhaps one designated user, the site's
BK> newsadmin, could have control over configuring just *what* the kids are
BK> allowed to see listed <g>).  If a user wants to take an additional
BK> newsgroup that isn't already downloaded, this request should somehow be
BK> passed to the local newsadmin for actioning.

Adding and removing newsgroups is already outside the
concern of snews.exe itself.  So you might add those
kind of things to a wishlist for DIS?

As for config'ing what the kids are allowed to see, are
there really any 11-year olds who haven't the nouse to run
an ascii editor and modify nntp.dat or whatever?  Parental
supervision is probably a huge (off-?)topic in itself.

BK> Incidentally, whilst working on the .NRC aspect of SNews, how about
BK> cutting down its volume drastically?  It would be very easy, surely, to
BK> reflect the format of the .newsrc of many of the standard Unix readers,
BK> which don't require every single read article to be listed separately.

You raised that previously on 27 May 95.  The resulting
thread never came up with anything categoric on that format
(except for the obvious improvement of e.g. 5-7 instead of
5 6 7).

My view then, as now, is that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it",
even tho the present scheme is inelegant.  After all the size
of the file is perhaps little more than 0.1% of your newsbase.
If the .nrc file were rewritten each time the user exits
a newsgroup (instead of waiting until exiting snews), the
system would be more robust, and then the size would become
more of a consideration.  Currently it takes a noticeable
time to write an .nrc file when most articles are marked as
read, acceptable at shut-down, but not when switching
newsgroups (or perhaps I should just get a faster PC).

BTW, if someone does implement it as mentioned above, they
need to bear in mind that there is a bug in current versions
of Snews, leading to negative numbers in the .nrc file.

--
John Washington