From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!cbosg!cbosgd!mark Newsgroups: net.news.b Title: Re: full names in news 2.7 - (nf) Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2347 Posted: Fri Jun 11 15:03:46 1982 Received: Sun Jun 13 01:48:15 1982 References: sdcarl.310 OK, look. Neither I nor the people at Berkeley had any idea there were such widely different gecos formats in use. We just thought that most passwd files began with a full name. Clearly this was wrong. It looks like the answer is going to be to modify netnews to understand the two most common formats: the Berkeley finger format and the BTL RJE format. In addition, those routines will be moved to a separate source file, so that each site can replace it with whatever is locally appropriate. Putting your full name in your .newsrc is NOT the answer, although it may be the best any site can do. The reason is that it requires each person to actively make an effort to put his/her full name in the newsrc file. The problem is that 99% of the people would not bother. Relying on a system database which is already there is much better - it seems like 90% of the systems have the full name somewhere, and most of them are in the gecos field somewhere. An alternative I consider acceptable is that the full name go in the .newsrc file, but the default be something stupid like "Some Guy". This might be enabled on a per-site basis, or the default might be taken from gecos for sites allowing it. Comments are still invited. Mark