From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!utah-cs!sask!derek
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: News system proposal
Article-I.D.: sask.205
Posted: Sat Feb  5 04:03:42 1983
Received: Sun Feb  6 07:31:18 1983

There seems to be a problem with expiring newsgroups.  I would like to 
suggest the following method of storing news on a system to cure this.

	o  There should be one directory on a system which contains
	   all news items.  Each news item is stored in its own file
	   and the name of the file is the article ID.

	o  There should be one file which contains a list of newsgroups
	   to which the site may post news.  This file exists under the
	   present system and is called 'ngfile'.

	o  There should be one history file for each newsgroup.  This
	   file contains the article ID, a date and sequence number
	   for that date, and, an optional expiry date.

	o  Each user has a file in his/her home directory indicating
	   readnews options and which articles have been read by
	   recording the date-sequence numbers.

	o  The sys file, indicating to which sites news items are
	   passed, exists in its present format.

When articles expire, all reference to them is removed from the history
files and the news file is deleted.  When all items of a particular group
have disappeared, then the group no longer exists.

The current interfaces for posting news and reading news function as they
do presently (and with any new features as they arise).

Any comments?

Derek Andrew
U of Saskatchewan