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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/17/84; site opus.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!hao!cires!nbires!opus!rcd
From: rcd@opus.UUCP (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Overhelpfulness in 2.10.2
Message-ID: <906@opus.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 14:21:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: opus.906
Posted: Tue Oct 16 14:21:46 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Oct-84 06:49:36 EDT
References: <890@opus.UUCP> <140@geowhiz.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 44

> > A second over-helpfulness is sucking in the entire base article prefixed
> > with "> " for a followup. 
> 
>   I vote that this feature be retained.  It helps keep replies in
>   context.  I think that users should be aware that they don't have
>   to keep the entire "> " prefixed article in their follow ups.

I think that, in an ideal world, picking up the article with "> " is a good
idea.  My concern is that things are not "all for the best in this the best
of all possible worlds" and that it's going to give us much longer
articles.  (Without the base article cited in the followup, there's still
the "References:" line which lets you go back to the parent article.
Different people need different amounts of context.)

Also, I didn't realize that the convention which makes the article's
pathname available (in the shell variable A) was not widely known/used.

> > The business of tucking a copy of your posting into author.copy is another
> > feature I could do without.
> 
>   I vote that this feature be retained.  If you don't like it, set the
> environment variable NEWSARCHIVE to /dev/null.  I don't see why it is
> necessary to complain about features that are so easily disabled.

No feature is free, and even if any individual feature is quite cheap, the
sum of them can place a substantial burden on understanding, documentation,
and maintenance.  (I admit that I overreact to creeping featurism.)  In the
case of author_copy, what happened was that I couldn't find the
documentation for this new version of news on our system.  I tried making
author_copy an unwritable file--that kills postnews before it posts the
article.  Next I found someone who knew where the source code was; we
looked and found the use of NEWSARCHIVE in the code and I dutifully trudged
off and set NEWSARCHIVE=/dev/null, exported it, and re-executed .profile.
This worked but still gave me a message and needlessly "wrote" a copy of
the article.  Turns out that the correct way to disable the feature (found
by later experimentation on a hunch) is to set NEWSARCHIVE to a null
string--the message, the copy, and everything goes away.  (This seems not
to be well known...after my original posting a couple of people asked how I
had disabled it.)  This is what the feature cost me, and tho I admit to
stumbling around, I'm not a complete idiot.  It would be more useful if
there weren't other easy ways to solve the problem.
-- 
Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.