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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!we13!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!minn-ua!sew
From: sew@minn-ua.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: A Thought on Newsgroup Structure (lo - (nf)
Message-ID: <923@minn-ua.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jan-84 21:31:48 EST
Article-I.D.: minn-ua.923
Posted: Mon Jan 30 21:31:48 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Feb-84 15:47:26 EST
Sender: notes@minn-ua.UUCP
Organization: Univ. of Minn. Computer Center, Minneapolis
Lines: 34

#R:druxt:-88400:minn-ua:10900001:000:1456
minn-ua!sew    Jan 30 12:39:00 1984

(A non-blank first line seems to be an obscure net custom)

The "notes" programs already seem to meet your description pretty well.  Notes
presents messages as messages with responses tacked on to them.  Its index shows
the title of the original message and the number of responses.  A message is
thus similar to a subgroup with a bunch of messages in it.  This is as if each
message were its own subgroup.

You can manually select the message which you want to read, then you can step
through the responses in sequence.  This is similar to reading a news file with
a program which simply presents the messages in the sequence received.

If you're using the sequencer, if a message has any new responses then you first
are shown the original message and then the new responses.  This is similar
to using a program which only prints the news received since the last time you
read news.

As for getting rid of stale subjects, "notes" keeps a message and all its
responses if the most recent response is less than a certain age.  I think at
our site a message is deleted if there have been no new responses in two weeks,
but all this is implementation dependent.

There might be some similar programs.  As "notes" shows, modifying usenet news
is not necessary.  It can be (is?) done with the "References" line in a
message header, which contains the message-ID of the original message.


From the analog digits of
Scot E. Wilcoxon
...ihnp4!umn-cs!minn-ua!sew