Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP 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: Overhelpfulness in 2.10.2 Message-ID: <890@opus.UUCP> Date: Thu, 11-Oct-84 22:47:53 EDT Article-I.D.: opus.890 Posted: Thu Oct 11 22:47:53 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 13-Oct-84 04:56:49 EDT Distribution: net Organization: NBI,Inc, Boulder CO Lines: 27 There's one saying we're going to be seeing a lot on the net in the future. It's: *** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE *** I'm not sure why the newest postnews finds this necessary. I can damn well find where I want to put the message without any help, but it's easy to let the funny *** line slip off the screen while you're editing and forget to delete it. A second over-helpfulness is sucking in the entire base article prefixed with "> " for a followup. What we're getting as a result is followups which contain long, largely irrelevant base articles--even to the signature lines. (It would have been easy enough to have a separate program to generate the "> "ed base article--at least that way the default would be minimal relevant material instead of maximal irrelevant material, plus it's easier to implement:-) The business of tucking a copy of your posting into author.copy is another feature I could do without. If I need a copy I can always save it from the editor, or I can save it later when I encounter the posting in reading news. Partly this was annoying because it took some poking around to find out how to disable it--and one thing I did NOT need was yet another environment variable. -- Dick Dunn {hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd (303)444-5710 x3086 ...Relax...don't worry...have a homebrew.