Message-ID: < anews.Aucbonyx.118>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!Onyx:glickman
X-Path: utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!Onyx:glickman
From: Onyx:glickman
Date: Fri May 16 10:29:40 1980
Subject: New Netnews
I'm working on a new netnews. It is not ready. It is taking a lot longer
that it should. I hope to have a rough version running locally this week.
Initially, the major new features will be:
1) No more .bitfile, .uindex, or .nindex. Everyone has a .newsrc file in
their home directory which contains a list of the articles they've already
read. This will allow skipping articles and coming back to them later:
random-access. The same interfaces are around: /bin/mail, msgs, and print.
The -c option still works in the same way, but I'm beginning work on an
improved interface with the Berkeley Mail program so that netnews will know
which articles were looked at during Mail.
2) Much faster.
3) New article format. Looks like a letter.
4) Expiration dates. The "expire" program just goes around and cancels
all articles whose expiration dates are older than the current date.
5) There are directories for each newsgroup in the spool directory and
all the articles have sequentially numbered filenames in their directories.
This system is compatible with the MH news system.
6) The netnews command is split into two commands: inews, which inserts
news, and readnews.
7) Less locking!
There are subtle changes, too numerous to mention here.
As a reply to somebody's article last week suggesting that ucbvax isn't
running a vanilla netnews: It is running a vanilla netnews. Also, the
current netnews doesn't allow forwarding. That is, if a system receives
an article that it doesn't subscribe to, it will just ignore it. In the
new netnews, the default will be to forward all articles even if there is
no local interest but via a compile option a site may choose to run it the
old way to restrict traffic.
I'll try to keep you posted on late-breaking developments.
Matt Glickman
(ucbvax!Onyx:glickman)
Message-ID: < anews.Aucbonyx.119>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!Onyx:glickman
X-Path: utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!Onyx:glickman
From: Onyx:glickman
Date: Wed Jun 17 13:39:33 1981
Subject: New Netnews
I have gotten a lot of mail requesting features. All of these features
look really good, but I have gotten the impression that what everybody
really wants is just to have something done. I've just put a lot of these
features on a todo list, concentrating on getting the major netnews flaws
fixed to make it more palatable to a larger user community. I am currently
planning to release the new version without all these little features,
and then add them as quickly as possible for a second release. Just thought
I'd let everybody know.
Matt
Message-ID: < anews.Aucbarpa.199>
Newsgroups: net.news
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:glickman
X-Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:glickman
From: ARPAVAX:glickman
Date: Mon Jul 27 14:51:56 1981
Subject: New netnews
The new netnews is now entering a testing phase. The inews program has
worked for weeks and I can't find any more bugs in readnews. More details
soon.
I should warn everybody of two aspects of the new netnews:
1) The first 13 characters of a newsgroup name must be unique.
2) Everything is mapped to lower case.
As soon as possible, I recommend adding net.ALL to your .sys files is addition
to NET.ALL. This won't harm anything, but will keep your site from rejecting
articles that come from new sites. Don't worry about ALL. I have it as all
in the new version, but ALL never travels between sites so it shouldn't matter.
Matt
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