From: dawson@willard.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: .QWK mail reader for Waffle
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 20:55:38 EST
Organization: Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814

jhood@smoke.marlboro.vt.us (and the eyes in his head see the World spinning roun writes:

> At least I think it's not.  I don't think grubbing through a newsgroup
> or echo without some kind of net software is convenient or even worth
> the bother.  I would describe an offline reader as some kind of
> software that conveniently handles reading messages and replying to
> them, relying on the connectivity and addressability of a remote host,
> and intended for a single user.  An offline reader system also allows
> for downloading selected batches of messages on an irregular basis,
> and doesn't require regular polling, like a UUCP system.

I think I'd prefer to see an additional "control" message created:

newbatch:  Ask uucp feed site to construct batch, according to latest
Dynafeed (or nearest approximation to that neat idea) specifications for
receiving site, and to queue up resulting batch for delivery to the
receiving system.

So, you'd have to place one UUCP call, delivering your UUX command to your
feed site, and then poll a bit later to pick up your news.  Seems like it
would take minimal additional work on the part of system admins.  It's a
simple matter of allowing access to the BATCH command (on the feed site)
to your downstream uucp neighbors.  Likely, I'd wrap the BATCH command
into a NEWBATCH.BAT file specific for each system, and disallow access to
other systems' newbatch scripts (I wouldn't want site-a to be able to
force batching for site-b, for example).

This method of batching news would have the further advantage of freeing
up the phone line while your batch was being made (assuming some background
processing is available on the sending system.. even a DOS Waffle could
be hacked to provide such [it'd be easier to implement if Waffle were a
Windows application rather than a DOS application, however]).  I wouldn't
want you just idly twiddling your fingers, keeping other bbs users or
uucp traffic from using the port, while news/mail was being batched and
compressed for delivery to your system.

As long as your feed site did not do batching of news for your site prior
to receiving your newbatch request, then your stuff wouldn't be filling
up his hard drive between your infrequent POLLS.  (No matter what you
call it, you're still POLLing to collect news/mail, given what you've
said...)

On the other hand, I'd much rather you had a phone number my system could
call to deliver stuff, and make batching and delivery of news automatic.
It's really not all that hard, all you need is a voice/data switch, or
a distinctive-ringing call-director, or, obviously, a separate phone
line.

> Waffle/DOS doesn't meet that criterion; nor does downloading messages,
> reading them, hand-crafting replies, and uploading them into a BBS.

I think it does... or can, anyway.

> The format of rnews batches would work OK for downloading messages to
> an off-line reader, but doesn't handle the problem of uploaded news or
> mail, which must pick up some new headers and whatnot at the remote
> host.  And software that produces rnews batches now is oriented
> towards uucp feeds, and not towards interactive selection and capture
> of message batches.

The format of rnews works just fine for batched news.  It says nothing
about batched mail.  That would be useful... and has already been
implemented in various UNIX settings.

It would be nice to allow anonymous-UUCP access to the rnews command,
I guess.  Maybe I'm just not thinking about possible security loopholes.

> But then, what's 'READMAIL'?

Beats me...

> 
>   --jh
> -- 
> John Hood, Marlboro student and non-smoker-- Marlboro VT
> jhood@smoke.marlboro.vt.us


-- 
dawson@willard.UUCP (Willard Dawson)
gatech!vdbsan!willard!dawson
emory!uumind!willard!dawson
Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814