From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!pur-ee!CSvax:Pucc-H:Physics:crl
Newsgroups: net.notes
Title: Re: Notes Wish List - (nf)
Article-I.D.: pur-phy.669
Posted: Mon Feb  7 16:04:30 1983
Received: Wed Feb  9 05:13:45 1983

#R:pur-ee:13000013:pur-phy:9400002:000:3400
pur-phy!crl    Feb  7 14:15:00 1983

I like all of pur-ee!malcolm's ideas.  Here are a few of my own:

1)  Sequencing--I'd like the sequencer to know about single
	notes in a notesfile.  If I fall behind, I don't 
	want to read all 100 notes in net.misc at one sitting,
	for example.

2)  rotation--instead of just a way to rotate the crypted jokes, how
	about a general way of piping the text to a command ala
	"s- |opr" from B news.

3)  often, I find I want to scroll half a sceen, say when someone
	submits a table, piece of code, or a diagram.  In a way,
	B news using "more" is a good thing--it give me the control
	I sometimes want, as well as reg. expr. searches.

4) Global permission lists--very good.  I'd like to set myself up as
	the director for all groups w/o doing it manually (I use a
	"fake" user called notes to own everything.  I don't like
	spreading myself around the system when I know I will someday
	leave)

5) I've had notes blow lunch a number of times when I tried to compress
	a notesfile w/o being user "notes".  This leaves the NFINVALID
	bit set in the note.indx file, which basically closes off the
	notesfile to new submissions.  I learned how to fix the index
	with adb, but it isn't a whole lot of fun.

6) I'd like to see more info available from nfstats--like, the current
	number of notes and resps. in a file, and, if in a verbose mode
	to even give the title of each note, date received, and last
	access time, as well as disk usage stats

7) Perhaps each notesfile could specify its own default expiration time
	so that we needn't run a number of nfarchives with time 
	specifiers.  This eliminates the possiblity of missing a notesfile.
	(For example, I expire net.jokes quicker than the rest, but since
	I don't want to forget a newly created group, I end up doing a
	nfarchive -10 net.jokes;  nfarchive net.*;  , thus having to
	go through net.jokes twice for nothing.

8) Checknotes is slower than checknews, which surprises me.  I would
	think that notesfile's structure would make it quicker.  From
	memory, I think it was 50%-90% slower.

9) The net.general/net.followup problem should be hacked in to help
	net serenity -- sigh!

10)  I may be wrong, but from perusing the source, it seemed as if 
	notesfiles tries to guess that an article is a response to
	another even if it comes from B news by looking for a "Re: "
	prefix that matches another article's title.  If this is so,
	it could be made smarter to recognize a base note that comes
	in after a previous response, or just responses if the base
	is lost (ala transmission error, or net.followup)

11) Longer titles, perhaps, and put the title in the header of a note
	saved to a file.  The title is often very important.

12) A "-j" command, if the j key bounces, or I'm too trigger happy in
	net.misc

13) Fully integrate B news control messages?

14) Put the notesfile info for each message spit out to news
	in the header instead of the message, for the benefit
	of B news readers.  Version 2.9 and higher should pass
	the unrecognized headers forward without molestation.

WHEW!!!!!  What a mouthful!  In spite of the above, I really do love
notesfiles, but it just needs some "polish".  In particular, it
should be made as compatible with the network as a whole, especially
with B news release 2.10, due out soon, since we notesfiles users
are clearly in the minority

Charles LaBrec
pur-ee!Physics:crl
purdue!Physics:crl