From: crash@ckctpa.UUCP (Frank "Crash" Edwards)
Subject: Re: Cnews?  Help!
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:15:49 GMT
Reply-To: crash%ckctpa@tct.com (Frank "Crash" Edwards)
Organization: Edwards & Edwards Consulting

mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us (Michael B. Smith) writes:
>> I don't know what GRn expects to see in the .next file, so I can't
>> tell you what to fix.  Perhaps the author of GRn would consider using
>> the files provided with the stock (Unix) CNews as an option?  [The
>> "active" file keeps track of new articles; and "history" contains
>> information on what has been expired and what hasn't.]
>
>GRn expects that the .next file contains the "next article number" for a
>given newsgroup. That is, if a newsgroup has 1000 articles, numbered 1 to
>1001, then .next for that newsgroup would have 1002.
>
>DNews expects this as well. RNews which comes with AmigaUUCP maintains this
>file, automagically.
>
>GRn 1.16f (the next release) has a CNEWS flag which causes the .next file to
>be ignored. It does lengthen the time it takes for GRn to start up, however.
>GRn 1.16g will attempt to address that.

Why?  There are two possibilities, (1) you read the entire directory and
keep the article with the highest numbered filename, or (2) you read
the ACTIVE file and use field #2 (I think) which is maintained by the
CNews RELAYNEWS program (I'm trying to write filenames in all
uppercase so they can be more easily distinguished from generic
terms).

>Mike Meyer and I are in the midst of conversations about adding history and
>active files to AmigaUUCP. It will not happen very quickly, however. Unless
>Mike can spend LOTS of time on it.  :)

If you would like, I can format the manual pages for the ACTIVE and
HISTORY files, and provide a short synopsis on the subroutines that
CNews uses to access these files.  CNews is, if you haven't seen the
source code, very modular in design and those are routines are quite
easy to use.  In fact, the CNews distribution has two active.c source
files for whether you want the entire file cached or whether disk I/O
should be used (very handy for small-memory machines, but I
distributed the version that caches the whole file since I presumed
that most AmigaDOS-based sites would not be full-feeds, and if they
were they would have plenty of RAM available for unbatching).

Why not integrate CNews in the UUCP distribution?  Matt discussed this
with Larry Rosenman at one time, but since then Matt has been busy on
more adventurous projects...  Perhaps it's time to reconsider this?
In the Unix community there's talk of a "D News" version which is a
re-write of CNews that perhaps will be available (for Unix machines)
within 6-8 months as alpha/beta software.

In addition, the newsreader that I distributed with CNews has code
which accesses the ACTIVE file already, and it may be a good
introduction to how those accesses would look.  Email if you'd like
the newsreader source.  Also, I have LIBCNEWS.A which is the library
of compiled objects for Manx C; Larry was going to port/convert the
source to be SAS-compatible (whatever that means) but again, I think
other projects had a higher priority.

>  //   Michael B. Smith
>\X/    mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us  -or-  uunet.uu.net!virginia.edu!adastra!mbs

Email me if there's anything I can do to help.  I haven't worked in
CNews for quite some time, but I have a (virtually photographic)
memory of source code after I've been as immersed in it as I was with
CNews.
-- 
Frank "Crash" Edwards            King Marine Electronics, Inc.
Home: 813/786-3675               Work: 813/530-3411
    Emacs is a fine operating system, but I still prefer Unix.
	    -- stolen from Maurice LeBrun's .signature