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From: bees@infoswx.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: mod.computers.* vs. notes
Message-ID: <8700001@infoswx>
Date: Wed, 6-Nov-85 09:59:00 EST
Article-I.D.: infoswx.8700001
Posted: Wed Nov  6 09:59:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 08:15:06 EST
References: <5000014@ndm20>
Lines: 35
Nf-ID: #R:ndm20:5000014:infoswx:8700001:000:1578
Nf-From: infoswx.UUCP!bees    Nov  6 08:59:00 1985


I agree with those who propose keeping groups unique within the first
14 characters, for now.  Let's keep the net running smoothly.  Let's
pretend that most of the sites on this net were running 4.2 and notes.
A group of us want to create newsgroups like:

   net.howmuchwoodcouldawoodchuckchuckifawoodchuckcouldchuckwood.games

Well, this works just fine for most of us.  4.2 has no problem with
that as a filename.  Now all you netnews or 4.1 or V7 or System [35]
sites say, "Wait a minute!  We can't handle that!".  Now how would you
feel if we said, "You people have had over a year to fix your versions
of notes/netnews/UNIX to be compatible with the rest of the net, so too
bad.  Suffer."  Sure, you could kludge up a <4.2 system to use massive
aliases or store the above as:

   net/howmuchwoodcou/ldawoodchuckch/uckifawoodchuc/kcouldchuckwoo/d/games

but this wouldn't be real nice, would it.

As a future plan, I suggest that notes be modified to store it's
notesfiles in a hierarchy instead of all on one level.  Instead of a
directory ~notes/net.micro.amiga, notes could store networked
notesfiles in ~notes/net/micro/amiga.  This is exactly how netnews does
it, and would allow better compatibility between the two.  Of course,
4.2 still allows those directory names to be >14 characters, so there
would have to be a built in constraint, at least with networked
notesfiles.

Then after everyone is up to snuff we can take the 14 character
constraint off, and have names as long as we want.

Ray Davis
Teknekron Infoswitch, Richardson, TX
infoswx!bees, (214)644-0570