Re: english text only?

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On , March 20, 2002 at 17:16:11 (-0600), Mark A. Flacy wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: english text only?
>
>   Reads as if you are using poor tools for your news reader.

I have a plethora of most excellent news readers available for my use,
and I am an expert user of most of them (though I generally only use one
any more these days, when I need to use one).  Remember I was a news
server and feed operator (at several sites simultaneously) for quite a
few years.  I've done software development and maintenance of both news
transport systems and news readers.  I've even ported and maintained the
old 'notes' software from which 'modern' news and Lotus Notes both grew
from (and which itself was based on idas from pnotes and gnotes from the
Plato system).

RFC-1036 based systems are not the right tool to use _exclusively_ for a
forum such as this one.  Plain old e-mail is far less restrictive, far
more widly accessible, and far easier to use for the vast majority of
users who might be interested in this topic.

Once upon a time when I ran news servers I would gateway mailing lists
of common local interest into local newsgroups.  However I soon learned
that with the appropriate mail reading tools I didn't need to resort to
translating messages back and forth between RFC-1026 and RFC-822 just to
be able to manage discussion forums in RFC-822 format.

(Of course if you work at a site where lots of people are quite
interested in in the topic at hand, and all or most of your colleagues
are already familiar with using newsreaders, and you already have the
infrastructure in place to support newsgroups, then a local news gateway
to either the GNUsenet system, or even a local news gateway to the
mailing list, may be the most appropriate tool to use for this forum at
your particular site and for those of your colleagues who like it that
way, but only at your own site and others very much like it in these
specific ways.)

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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