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From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Helpfulness, environment vars, .newsrc, ideas
Message-ID: <1746@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 16-Oct-84 00:03:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.1746
Posted: Tue Oct 16 00:03:37 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 17-Oct-84 09:02:39 EDT
References: <890@opus.UUCP> <1578@nsc.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 26

> > The business of tucking a copy of your posting into author.copy is another
> > feature I could do without. 
> Also fixed, originally by Mark at Fortune, and I've hacked it further. My
> version (also at poor, overworked rick's house) doesn't save the message
> (following the true unix standard of doing nothing and saying nothing
> unless asked) unless you set an environment variable. I haven't figured out
> how to deal with YA environment variable due to lack of time, but I'll
> probably get frustrated enough one of these days...

Ahem, there's a good place for these options...it's called .newsrc .
That's where all the other news options go.  I know it's a true unix
standard for each program to do its options differently but we could
bend the standard just this once.

While I'm here, can I suggest more helpful things that readnews could do?

	(0)  Handle the HUP signal by Quitting, so you don't lose
	hours of reading time when 3-way calling rears its head,
	or you kick the phone by accident.

	(1)  Checkpoint itself every N messages (optionally) so you
	don't lose hours of reading time (or have to muck in the core
	file) when a system crash or bug (or HUP) kills your session.

	(2)  In vnews, accept Backspace to back up (screens or messages),
	just like Space moves you forward.