Known problems in NEWS Version 5.3 21-June-1988 ---------------------------------- B.1 The directory of a newsgroup with > 841 items (e.g. 1125) is incorrectly displayed after item 841. Information on items after the 841st becomes unavailable. This is a bug induced by a 64k byte limit on the size of a SMG virtual display. B.2 When DEREGISTERing a newsgroup from the DIRECTORY/REG display, the display returns to newsgroup number 1 (instead of remaining at the next (or previous) newsgroup as occurs when DELETE'ing a news group from DIRECTORY/ALL). B.3 When a newsgroup is DELETE'd in screen mode from DIRECTORY/ALL, moving with up- or down-arrow leaves a copy of the arrow pointer pointing at the next immediate newsgroup following the deleted one. B.5 (a) When reading a "long" article in NOSCREEN mode with NEWS_SCANSIZE = 21, the first page is displayed, but subsequent text is not paged at all. This occurs if the qualifier /NOSCREEN has been used explicitly, but NOT if NOSCREEN mode is _assumed_ because the device_type is unknown. (b) Also, the SCANSIZE used for the pages appears to be different for these two circumstances. Suggestions for NEWS Version 5.3 21-June-1988 -------------------------------- S.1 The 'search/edit' command should as a result edit the item where the string searched for is found and position at that string within the file. ****This is not possible in a generic fashiion - As the Editor used is configurable by each user a positioning command is not possible in a general manner. The only possible solution is to set up a process level logical name(s) which indicate the file, line number and character number, and leave the interpretation of these logical names to the editor startup procedure. S.2 One of the aspects of NEWS being able to have server nodes is that unfriendly users can ,by collecting all items from a remote server for instance, possibly write melt down a disk on the node at which he is working. ****This requires the NEWS files to be owned by a specific account. Then a logical name (NEWS_DISKQ_TRAGET) could be used as the 'target' news disk space. When disk usage exceeds this amount, no further server requests are saved on the NEWS area, (but are local to the requesting user). When SKIM/ITEMS is executed, local copies of news items (starting at the oldest in some way, are deleted until the target is achieved. USENET would also be mailed when SKIM detects that usage is over quota. S.3 If the 'add/cregrp' is used within NEWS and a group gets actually created a message should still be posted to USENET. ****This is possible, but may result in a lot of mail!! S.4 Some combination of qualifiers should be supported within NEWS such as 'DIR/REG/SINCE=TODAY. ****This is possible in a future release of NEWS. S.5 NEWS should support the command 'print/queue' thereby immediately printing the item requested on the specified queue.This has the advantage of letting users print items on different print queues from within news. ****Print requires modification in two areas - 1 - there is no need to make a local copy of the news item for printing - when the print command is executed the news item file name should be stored - not the file contents - the only exception to this is remote served news items, where a copy must be dragged over for local printing. Secondly there should be two commands: MARK PRINT is a 'special' tag which acts in the same fashion as the current PRINT command. PRINT should be changed to a) perform an immediate print, b) accept all the VMS standard qualifiers, c) allow the printing of ANY file, not necessarily NEWS item files if a filename is specified (as with the EDIT command. S.6 Various error conditions should be a bit more detailed. For instance when the NEWS command 'create group groupname' fails only the error line 'cannot create group' is displayed.There can be a lot of reasons why however. One line for instance could be 'cannot create group (diskquota exceeded)'. For instance a user reads an article in a group which is served at a remote node.He sometimes gets the error message 'cannot access item text'.This might however be 'cannot access item text (node unreachable)' or 'cannot access item text (network protocol error)'. ****This area of error treatment requires much more attention - A .MSG file with appropriate LIB$SIGNAL calls is the best answer here. This is future release material. S.7 When giving the command MAIL or FORWARD you have to give the address in the form "in%""user@node.domain""". I had the feeling that I used to enter it like user@node.domain, a much cleaner and easier way. I think the rewrite to that form should be done after asking for the To: address. ****Future release S.8 Broadcast (certainly OPCOM) messages appear not to be "trapped", and disrupt the screen, neccesitating a REFRESH. ****Future release S.9 A suggestion from several users: can SEARCH "string" optionally continue from the current item (as per continue search) rather than always start from the first item again? S.10 SKIM /ITEMS appears to make a full date/time comparison to determine if an item has expired, leading to SKIMs at different times of the same day continuing to find articles to expire. Is this intended/desirable? ****SKIM is very literal - it takes the creation time (exact to the second!), adds the expiry delta value, then compares to the current time. There are no plans to change this algorithm at this point. S.11 When modifying the contents or "attributes" of a newsgroup (e.g. when deleting items manually, changing expiry period, priority of registration, making local, etc.), the item directory is updated as appropriate, but the heading contains "stale" information. Can this display be updated at the time of change also? Fixed problems in NEWS Version 5.3 ---------------------------------- F.1 Re-formatting news batches sent from unix sites will always be a site-specific problem - the code I have written to parse a batch file and extract out news items certainly works on my site, but may not work for you - In such cases you may either pre-process the batch file to a format which my code will accept (read newsadd.c for a description of the format) or you may edit newsadd.c and change the parser to suit the incoming format. BEAST.PAS is also included in the sources as one site's solution to the pre-processor option. ****The ADD command has been aletered to accept and parse a wider range of possible message formats - Multiple sets of header lines are parsed, as is the 'N' format used to mail newsitems. The operation of the ADD command is to apply the RFC1036 header parse rules against the article header lines. Local defaults are generated for all missing compulsory header lines, and non-conformant header lines are discarded. F.2 NEWS /NOSCREEN behaves differently from NEWS /SCREEN when entering NEWS and pressing ONLY to select and read. Noscreen mode displays the article originally pointed to, but does NOT advance to the next article after the end of this first article, i.e. the same article is continually displayed. Screen mode on the other hand, does select the next article. ****Fixed (NEWSDISPLAY.C) F.3 Allow a VMS client to update the local newsgroup set to match that of a server: e.g. CREATE */SERVER=target node will create any new newsgroups found on the remote server system ****Fixed (NEWSCREATE.C, NEWSSETSHOW.C, NEWSSKIM.C) - New command qualifier: CREATE/INQUIRE