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From: jhh@ihldt.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: A gripe about 2.10 readnews - (nf)
Message-ID: <1694@ihldt.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 17-Jun-83 15:32:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihldt.1694
Posted: Fri Jun 17 15:32:15 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Jun-83 01:08:29 EDT
Lines: 24

Flame on
There is nothing worse than allowing selection of a pager by
environment variables and then customizing the call of that
pager to one and only one pager.  The same thing happenned
with the mail responses.  The first implementation was all
tied to UCB through Mail and/or vi.  While I have nothing
against them, I use Montgomery's EMACS and it's mail interface,
which does not support giving an address as an option.  News
2.10 has fixed that problem by sending the response to
EDITOR, and mailing the result.  This allows any editor to
be used.

If enhancements to an interface are made, make them portable.  One
method could be to specify options in the PAGER variable.
Also, be sure that they are upward compatible with current
software.  Not everybody has time to make changes over
all the source code so that everything works together.

There are some places that do not want the PAGER invoked
on the real file because the location of those files is
not fully known.

Flame off.
			John Haller