Re: Don't waste time on offline newsreaders...

[Toshio Kuratomi <badger prtr-13 ucsc edu>]

On Mon, 09 Feb, 1998 at 03:17:17PM -0600, Alan Shutko set free these words:
> >>>>> "M" == Michael Alan Dorman <mdorman@boxster.law.miami.edu> writes:
> 
> M> famrom@ran.es (Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero)
> M> writes:
> >> With Free Agent I download _only_ what I want. I choose which
> >> headers and article bodies. Nothing more.
> 
> M> Yes, they behave in exactly the same way.  You get nothing but what
> M> you're interested in.
> 
> No, they do _not_.
> 
> With Agent, you look at a list of headers and choose exactly which
> messages will come down the pipe.  With leafnode (and I'd guess
> NewsCache, as well), it downloads the groups you're interested in, but
> there's no way to specify specific articles or threads.
> 
> The difference can be illustrated by looking at c.o.l.advocacy.  An
> Agent user could read one thread from it and only download that
> thread's articles.  A leafnode user will have whole thing come down
> the pipe.
> 
> This is a big difference in paradigm between leafnode type solutions
> and Agent.  The Agent paradigm is inherently single user.  It's also
> very hands on.  Many people may not like this (like me... I like
> leafnode) but many people do and they will not be happy with leafnode.
> 
I disagree that the Agent paradigm is inherently single user.  I think it's
just a matter of granularity.  Whatever program you have doing the downloads
and cacheing just needs to keep track of what's in its cache on a smaller
scale.  User A has read a Thread containing news items 1-5.  User B comes
along the next day and wants to read the same thread, but it now includes
message 7-9 as well.  The program doing the network transactions should be
able to say, "Hey!  Just give me messages 7-9, I already have 1-5 in my global
cache."

-Toshio
-- 
badger  \"The Difference between today and yesterday is not so much what has
@prtr-13 \ changed between then and now as what I hope to change by tomorrow."
.ucsc.edu  \~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~