Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-crg!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!linus!philabs!micomvax!onfcanim!dave From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: problem with 2.11 - sys file broken (maps distribution) Message-ID: <15070@onfcanim.UUCP> Date: Tue, 16-Dec-86 12:16:19 EST Article-I.D.: onfcanim.15070 Posted: Tue Dec 16 12:16:19 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 18-Dec-86 06:45:09 EST References: <482@enmasse.UUCP> <298@bms-at.UUCP> <1910@ptsfa.UUCP> <21063@styx.UUCP> <722@epimass.UUCP> Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal Lines: 40 In article <722@epimass.UUCP> jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) writes: >In 2.11, any article without a Distribution: line is treated as if it >had Distribution: world. In older news, for an article without a >distribution line, only the newsgroup was checked. It's not clear to >me that the change gains us anything, but it's there. It does, in fact, buy some additional control. Formerly, it was not possible to select a set of articles that had a particular distribution. For example, if I tried to send all articles in "comp" with a distribution of "can" to a site "ostrich", I'd use a sys line like ostrich:comp,can:: Under 2.10, every article in "comp" that did not have a Distribution: line would also be sent, since the distribution was not checked in that case. With 2.11 defaulting a missing distribution to "world", and always checking that against the list in the sys file, and with the fact that group and distribution names are now disjoint sets, you can now select based on distribution codes. Why might I want to do this? Well, most news going from Montreal to other points in Canada west of here goes into the USA and back into Canada. (This makes sense in general, since Canadian cities are often closer to a large U.S. city across the border than to another Canadian city.) However, if I post something to comp.unix.wizards with a distribution of "can", most of Canada won't see it since it will stop at the border. I can circumvent the problem by sending articles with a distribution of "can" via one of my uucp links to a site in Ontario, but this is feasible only if the volume is small. 2.10 would have sent half the articles in "comp" as well as the ones I really wanted. Essentially, the handling of "distribution" done by 2.10 was useful only to restrict forwarding, and had the hidden assumption that the news distribution networks for a given distribution code (like "can") were connected within the domain of that distribution code. 2.11 makes distributions the equals of newsgroups in the sys file.