Re: Atheists

In article <f11bca$30ul$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Garrett Wollman <wollman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <3q9833dvipbb63nchh2eg0g4ohcfgaa9pk@xxxxxxx>,
Al in Dallas <alfargnoli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I can't imagine a killfile feature that COULDN'T match authors. Wasn't
that how they got started?

No, it is not. The original KILL file (invented by Larry Wall) was
used only to match subjects -- which is still reflected in the ease of
trashing subjects in rn-family newsreaders (one keystroke). Larry
added the ability to match on arbitrary headers fairly early on, but
this was quite slow since you had to retrieve the header of every
article just to match on a single field. The ability to use the
"overview" feature (which provides a summary of the important header
fields) was added by Wayne Davison fairly late in the trn development
cycle (it still doesn't use it very effectively[1]), and I think the
"a" flag to the article regexp matcher (which implements the
underlying functionality) was added at about the same time.

Thanks for the little history lesson.

Funny how old most of my environment is. BSD is thirty years old; the
X Window System is 23; Emacs is almost as old as I am (and that's not
counting its TECO heritage, either). xv is a sprightly
eighteen-year-old (and there's still nothing better or faster for what
it does). The current implementation of TeX was released by Knuth in
1983. And the rn family dates back to some time in the mid-eighties
-- it was already pretty well-developed by the time I found out about
Usenet in 1987-88. The Web browser and the IRC client are probably the
newest creations, in terms of their code bases, but the technologies
they implement are much older (Tim B-L invented the Web in 1990, and
Finnish university students invented IRC in about 1988).

Remarkable overlap between your environment and mine: Linux rather
than BSD (but a lot of the tools I use probably have their roots
in something from BSD), vi(m) rather than emacs, and I don't always
bother to track down and install xv after upgrades, but yeah.

I find that many of these tools are, as they say, a great improvement
over some of their successors.

[1] If I didn't have to work for a living I would fix this.

I too have a list of things I'll be adding to trn Real Soon
Now. Top of list currently -- though this may just be a
matter of configuring the right things -- is getting it to
do the right thing about non-ASCII characters, in the various
ways in which they appear in posts these days. (Anything you
know about this and care to share would be appreciated.)

--
Decline To State
(But the e-mail address in the header is real.)
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Atheists
    ... The original KILL file (invented by Larry Wall) was ... "overview" feature (which provides a summary of the important header ... The Web browser and the IRC client are probably the ... Finnish university students invented IRC in about 1988). ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: setting header/footer in word from ASP page
    ... I'm automatically making the user save the .doc file, ... in the web browser using VBScript: ... Do you know how I can get the header page saved on the user's machine as well? ... You'll see Word's round-trip HTML. ...
    (microsoft.public.office.developer.automation)
  • Re: how do I get user info to print on pgs from community printers
    ... You can add header footer information when the pages are processed through an application, whether Word, Excel or in your example ... You may want to use the link below to check with the folks in the Windows XP Printing & Fax discussion group to see if they have any ... MS Office Community discussion/newsgroups via Web Browser ...
    (microsoft.public.office.setup)
  • Re: how to remove duplicate header line in CGI
    ... When I write a CGI script in perl I seem to get this line printed out ... TWICE! ... It also shows up in the web browser as the first line, ... If you use fatalsToBrowser then a fatal error might cause an extra header ...
    (comp.lang.perl.misc)
  • Re: [SLE] Printing in Mozilla Mail
    ... >including the header as part of the printed text? ... >If not is there a way to get the mail program to let you print only ... >Printing only selected text is available in the web browser and email ... God said, ...
    (SuSE)