Aucbvax.5075
fa.unix-wizards
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!unix-wizards
Tue Nov 10 04:49:28 1981

>From decvax!yale-comix!hawley@Berkeley Tue Nov 10 04:13:04 1981
Subject: speedier news perusal

The volume of news distributed is increasing, and is already
a problem for some.

This letter is directed to a common complaint: "it takes too long
for joe hacker to sift through the huge pile of news".

Need for screen-oriented "news":
   One part of the problem is that the "news" program (and "mail",
   for that matter) is basically "article-at-a-time", forcing the reader
   to drudge through the list of items in a linear order.
   It's pretty easy to improve on this; simply write a screen-oriented
   version of "news": the user views a set of one-line titles/headlines
   (pref. sorted by time and topic/newsgroup) and picks out articles
   worth reading, not unlike reading a paper.
   If screen editors on Unix were more "directory based", this problem would,
   in large measure, already be solved.  The job of news viewing
   could be done from within the editor.

Improving selection of news items:
   Another harder part of the problem is in the criterion used to
   select items for perusal -- the "subscription" list.
   The user may want a more precise way of narrowing down the huge
   list of stories, something more key-based, a la: "show me all the
   news articles which contain these phrases: phrase1, phrase2...".
   This is just a big "grep" problem; however, it requires >very
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This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.