Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 GARFIELD 20/11/84; site garfield.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!garfield!dave
From: dave@garfield.UUCP (David Janes)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.notes
Subject: Re: Information Overload and What We Can Do About It
Message-ID: <3621@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Sep-85 06:46:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: garfield.3621
Posted: Mon Sep 23 06:46:42 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Sep-85 09:22:47 EDT
References: <10381@ucbvax.ARPA> <28f87e10.1de6@apollo.uucp> <2355@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Semi-Optimal Software Solutions (Inc.)
Lines: 48

In article <2355@sdcrdcf.UUCP> lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) writes:
| I'd love to make rn run off of a multi-key dbm file.  Who'll rewrite inews?

	I *have* rewritten inews and rnews totally from scratch and it
does basically everything that Erik E. Fair suggested. It uses a different
delivery system (for saving articles on the local site). It extensively
uses dbm type files. Newsgroups are considered just another type of keyword. 
	It is still in the final stages of debuging, and of course, 
will need 'real-world' testing. Source code for interested people in 4-8 
weeks (depending on my work load.) It still needs an 'expire' program and 
a 'readnews' type program, which are the next things I will work on. A few 
details (I'll post more later, in a week or so):

o	I use ndbm for database functions. I *might* replace this
	with mdbm, depending...
o	The main program (rnews) is rather small: I have an extensive
	news handling library (which I use a lot, and is quite nice).
o	Almost all memory is dynamically allocated, headers can be of
	infinite length (if you have the memory.) No more truncated 
	header problems. Headers can be extended across multiple lines.
o	It keeps track of all the followups to a single article in the
	ndbm file in (posting time) sorted order (along with other info).
o	It is essentially keywords based, only right now I use the
	Newsgroups: line as the keywords line, with an option to
	also use the Keywords: field (Brad Templeton's Knews). It would be 
	trivial to add Bozo filters if needed, I didn't cause I felt
	it would be dangerous, and basically unnecessary (Bozo's tend
	to stick to the same conversations, which would get killed anyway.)
o	It can support a very intelligent 'expire' [soon to be done].
o	lot's of other neat stuff!

I have been working on this (on and off) for > 1 year. My main inspirations
were the discussions in 'net.news' over the last 18 months, Knews (which it
mostly implements), down!honey's ideas of news being a giant database
(it is!), and the code in 2.10.2 Bnews (it had to be rewritten.)

It will still need extra work for things like batching, etc. It also
doesn't really care too much about Control: messages either, but that will
be taken care of. Anyone interested?

dave
-- 
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