Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!plx!slvblc!dick
From: dick@slvblc.UUCP (Dick Flanagan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: DOS and changing the path
Summary: An open response to Bill Wilson
Message-ID: <8806300546.AA02997@slvblc.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 88 05:46:42 GMT
References: <761@naucse.UUCP>
Reply-To: slvblc!dick@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (Dick Flanagan)
Organization: SLV Systems Group, Ben Lomond, California
Lines: 76
Disclaimer: none

In article <761@naucse.UUCP> wew@naucse.UUCP (Bill Wilson) writes:
> I apologize for including a binary in this message but the
> people in charge of the binaries group will not have the
> decency to tell me how to post a program to that group.

        As the current person "in charge of the binaries group,"
        I have to admit that it WAS difficult to respond to your
        request to post your program to comp.binaries.ibm.pc.
        Especially when you didn't send it to me for posting
        until over 24 hours AFTER you posted it yourself to
        comp.sys.ibm.pc.

        Connectivity is not 100% within Usenet, Bill, and I did
        not see any other inquiry you might have posted.  But
        not knowing how to properly post a binary is not an
        excuse to _knowingly_ post it improperly.

> The program that I have included is a utility to change the
> path by adding or subtracting elements from the current path.

        Including source code would have been very nice, especially
        in this day of the virus, and your $5 suggested donation
        seems a bit high for something that can be easily done with
        a few lines in a batch file, but that's just my opinion.
 
> I wrote and use the utility and find it very helpful.  It has 
> been tested under MS/IBM DOS 3.2 & 3.3.

        One word of caution from an inadvertant tester:  if I
        envoke your program as 'chgpath -' (omitting the path
        name) on my AT clone running PC-DOS 3.3, it will promptly
        trash low memory, resulting in that familiar message
        notifying me that COMMAND.COM has just halted.  8-(

        Very thorough testing is always a good idea before
        submitting a program for world-wide distribution.

> Again, I apologize for posting in this manner.  If someone
> will tell me how to get postings sent to the binaries area
> I will be glad to comply.  When I post I receive an error
> return of 10 and am told that I cannot post to that newsgroup.

        Your local system administrator should have been able to
        assist you.  In any case, if you are still unable to post
        submissions directly to comp.binaries.ibm.pc for forwarding
        to the current moderator, you can email them directly to:

                bsu-cs!ibmpc-binaries@uunet.uu.net
                                 or
                bsu-cs!ibmpc-binaries@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu

Bill, before you start questioning the decency of folks, I think you
should do a little more research into how the net operates.  Talk to
your system administrator and other folks at your site who are familiar
with it, read the material in the net.announce groups (it will answer
tons of your questions), and, probably best of all, sit back and just
read the groups for a few weeks to get a feel for how everything plays
together.

In your mail to me, you said you received flames and insults in response
to your request for information on posting binaries.  For these, I
sincerely apololgize.  Unfortunately, some nerves are getting a little
frazzled regarding the binaries groups these days, and there are always
those people who think they have to yell in order to communicate or who
are simply into abuse and intimidation.  Fortunately for all of us,
they are in the minority.

Please contact me via email if there are any questions you still have
after looking into the other sources I mentioned, and I'll try to help
answer them if I can. . . .

Dick

--
Dick Flanagan, vacation moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc (23 hrs 13 min...)
{backbones}!ucbvax!ucscc!slvblc!dick  or  slvblc!dick@ucscc.ucsc.edu