Cross-posting

On 9/21/2013 11:22 AM, Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
In alt.windows7.general, Paul in Houston TX wrote:

IIRC, Netscape 4x did mark cross posted items as read, so for unknown
reasons the Mozilla devs dropped that convenience.

I do not believe that any Mozilla-based "news client" of any vintage has
ever marked cross-posted messages as read; so no, the devs did not drop
anything.


What's crazy is that after years and years of complaints from users
worldwide, nobody has ever tackled the issue. It's not like they don't
recognize it is an issue. For some reason it just doesn't get fixed.

Seems to me it would be an extremely popular add-on if anyone could get
it right.

"Ed Cryer" wrote in message


What I want now is comments from anyone whose news prog
does mark the others as read.

By "others" do you mean yours specifically or posts in general?


If "in general", mine does. I use Outlook Express on both my desktop (Win
XP) and laptop (Win8 but OE is in a virtual XP drive in Win8).



--

dadiOH
____________________________

Winters getting colder? Tired of the rat race?
Taxes out of hand? Maybe just ready for a change?
Check it out... http://www.floridaloghouse.net

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
In alt.windows7.general, Paul in Houston TX wrote:

IIRC, Netscape 4x did mark cross posted items as read, so for unknown
reasons the Mozilla devs dropped that convenience.

I do not believe that any Mozilla-based "news client" of any vintage has
ever marked cross-posted messages as read; so no, the devs did not drop
anything.

Beau looks to be correct.
Researching NS and cross posting as read, it looks like the
pre-Mozilla versions of Netscape did have the ability to mark
cross posted messages as read. It changed when NS went to
Mozilla some time in the mid 4x series and Mozilla dropped
that ability.

dadiOH wrote:
"Ed Cryer" wrote in message


What I want now is comments from anyone whose news prog
does mark the others as read.

By "others" do you mean yours specifically or posts in general?


If "in general", mine does. I use Outlook Express on both my desktop (Win
XP) and laptop (Win8 but OE is in a virtual XP drive in Win8).




Thanks. I knew I used to have something that handled them properly. It
must have been OE in my old XP days.
Has it handled this current thread in the two relevant groups?

Ed

Bob Henson wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:

During the recent cross/multi-posting controversy I discovered that my
Thunderbird wasn't handling cross-posting properly. It didn't appear to
be marking as read in other groups. I've now updated to version 24 (I'll
have to send this quickly before they turn out another version :-) ).
I'm cross-posting this into alt.comp.os.windows-8. Then I can put it to
the test.

I'd appreciate comments from other Tbird users; and other newsreaders as
well. I'm getting a bit fed up with Tbird.

Ed

No problem here with 40tude Dialog. It ignored (did not even download) your
message in the Windows 8 group.


Hhhmm! That's one solution, I guess. Only download the first group in
the list.

My head is telling me that there are bound to be problems with that
method, but I can't drag its reasoning to the fore at the moment.
Maybe later.

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote:

Bob Henson wrote:

No problem here with 40tude Dialog. It ignored (did not even download) your
message in the Windows 8 group.

Forte Agent used to manage it decades ago, though I remember the data
(xpost.dat ?) occasionally getting corrupted and/or huge.

My head is telling me that there are bound to be problems with that
method, but I can't drag its reasoning to the fore at the moment.
Maybe later.

My manual method when I notice a cross-post to multiple groups that I
acually read, is to hit 'K' on it in all but one group, I'm at risk of
someone removing a group from the posts, and me missing the sub-thread
from there onwards, but it's only usenet, noone dies ...

Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
In alt.windows7.general, Paul in Houston TX wrote:

IIRC, Netscape 4x did mark cross posted items as read, so for unknown
reasons the Mozilla devs dropped that convenience.

I do not believe that any Mozilla-based "news client" of any vintage
has ever marked cross-posted messages as read; so no, the devs did not
drop anything.

Beau looks to be correct.
Researching NS and cross posting as read, it looks like the
pre-Mozilla versions of Netscape did have the ability to mark
cross posted messages as read. It changed when NS went to
Mozilla some time in the mid 4x series and Mozilla dropped
that ability.

It's quite possible the back end of the
respective tools, makes a difference to how
easy it is to do things.

Thunderbird uses "Mork format" for the .msf index files.
Firefox uses SQLite.

Maybe Netscape used something else.

I don't think it's impossible to implement the feature.
However, it would require referencing multiple .msf files
(as the MIDs could be stored in there), so the transient
memory footprint of Thunderbird might be a bit larger.

Both .msf files and SQLite files balloon to rather large
sizes. And this causes perceptible effects on the
speed of the tool. If they added this feature,
and Thunderbird was "slower than a pig", I bet the
users would be *real happy* :-) You can't please
everyone...

Thunderbird was scheduled to have Mork replaced by
another storage format. And I don't think that
happened. If you're using a modern version, you
could check and see if they're still using .msf files.

Both Thunderbird and Firefox have an insane number
of source files. And if the remaining developers
happened to not understand how it all works, that
would not surprise me in the least. This is unlike
some other USENET clients, with much more compact
source directories. I remember using tools in the
past (that you had to compile for yourself), where
the source would be fewer than about 60 files or so.
Thunderbird and Firefox are up in the 60,000 file
region. Much of it related to HTML engines and the
like. In Thunderbird, as a newsreader, gobs of
that code hardly ever get used. If you receive
HTML email with Javascript in it, maybe then some
of that other stuff gets used.

So for the developers, Thunderbird has a "huge carcass"
to drag around. They probably waste more time tweaking
the HTML engine portion, than working on new features.
They would have to keep up-to-date on any security
issues, and the security issues would be in the
non-newsreader portion of the code.

To see how big a newsreader source should actually
be, look at the size of this one in 7-ZIP. When the
source is this small, the developers have no distractions
(and no excuses). 770,123 bytes, 199 files.

http://web.archive.org/web/200703270...ews_source.zip

Paul

Bob Henson wrote:
Ed Cryer wrote:

During the recent cross/multi-posting controversy I discovered that my
Thunderbird wasn't handling cross-posting properly. It didn't appear to
be marking as read in other groups. I've now updated to version 24 (I'll
have to send this quickly before they turn out another version :-) ).
I'm cross-posting this into alt.comp.os.windows-8. Then I can put it to
the test.

I'd appreciate comments from other Tbird users; and other newsreaders as
well. I'm getting a bit fed up with Tbird.

Ed

By the way, if you cross post you must set a followup group, or you'll get
replies in all the groups and folk will get very peevish when they have to
read all the chaos that ensues.


How do you set a follow-up group?

Ed

Bob Henson has written on 9/21/2013 2:45 PM:
Ed Cryer wrote:


How do you set a follow-up group?


In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the top of
the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the beginning of the
last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu and then add
whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

Juan Wei has written on 9/21/2013 4:32 PM:
Bob Henson has written on 9/21/2013 2:45 PM:
Ed Cryer wrote:


How do you set a follow-up group?


In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the top of
the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the beginning of the
last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu and then add
whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.


Huh? I thought I had deleted the win-8 group! Oops.

Juan Wei wrote:

Bob Henson has written:
Ed Cryer wrote:
How do you set a follow-up group?

In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the
top of the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the
beginning of the last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu
and then add whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

That is *not* a "Follow-up". Persons in the groups you deleted will not
have the instruction that limits where their reply is sent, nor will they
even see the post.

In my Pan, there is a tab here in my compose window, named "More Headers".
If I click that, there is a new field:

Followup-To: [ field to specify desired group ]

--
-bts
-This space for rent, but the price is high

Beauregard T. Shagnasty has written on 9/21/2013 4:43 PM:
Juan Wei wrote:

Bob Henson has written:
Ed Cryer wrote:
How do you set a follow-up group?

In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the
top of the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the
beginning of the last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu
and then add whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

That is *not* a "Follow-up".

No, it's a Followup. (TB term.) :-)

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:
Juan Wei wrote:

Bob Henson has written:
Ed Cryer wrote:
How do you set a follow-up group?

In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the
top of the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the
beginning of the last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu
and then add whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

That is *not* a "Follow-up". Persons in the groups you deleted will not
have the instruction that limits where their reply is sent, nor will they
even see the post.

In my Pan, there is a tab here in my compose window, named "More Headers".
If I click that, there is a new field:

Followup-To: [ field to specify desired group ]


Well, Juan's bumbling attempt to understand "follow-up" shows how
unenlightening the term is.
What does it do then? Post the message to all the groups?? Plus what?

Ed

Beauregard T. Shagnasty has written on 9/21/2013 4:43 PM:
Juan Wei wrote:

Bob Henson has written:
Ed Cryer wrote:
How do you set a follow-up group?

In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the
top of the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the
beginning of the last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu
and then add whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

That is *not* a "Follow-up".

Oh, you're right. I misunderstood your message.

If you're replying to a newsgroup post in TB using TB, Newsgroup: lines
filled in from the post.

Then you click below the last Newsgroups: to get a Newsgroups:, r-click
that to get a drop-down, and select Followup-To.

On Sat, 21 Sep 2013 17:47:18 -0400
Juan Wei wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty has written on 9/21/2013 4:43 PM:
Juan Wei wrote:

Bob Henson has written:
Ed Cryer wrote:
How do you set a follow-up group?

In Thunderbird, when you've entered all the "Newsgroup" lines at the
top of the message , click the "Newsgroup" box drop-down at the
beginning of the last (empty) line and select "Follow-up" from the menu
and then add whichever (one) group you want the replies to go to.

When I do a Followup to a message (like this one), TB lists each
newsgroup in the header. It's fairly simple to delete all but the one
you wish to send to.

That is *not* a "Follow-up".

No, it's a Followup. (TB term.) :-)

BTS is referring to the NNTP "Followup-To: " header where you can give
a clue to the replying poster's client to have them post a reply to a
different set of groups than the replied to post has in its newsgroups
field.

This post is fup'd to "alt.test,microsoft.public.test" so you might
want to add your present group when replying.