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.