Aucbarpa.482 net.news utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:glickman Fri Dec 4 00:35:21 1981 Re: Bnews bug? A modification was made to the gamma distribution of B news that has confused many people. The primary article selection algorithm in version A involves the last time you read the news. In B news, it doesn't matter what time you read the news, just what articles you read. Most of the time, this works out pretty much the same. The exception occurs when you skip over an article via '+' or some such method. Then the article not listed as read in your .newsrc and the next time you read news, it will be presented to you. Anyhow, when the -a flag is used in A news, you can see articles you've already seen since the primary selection criterion is disabled. However, when you say "readnews -a tuesday" in B news, you will only see articles received since last tuesday that are still unread. The key is the -x option: Ignore the .newsrc's info about which articles have already been read. The -x option in conjunction with the -a option will probably let you do what you want. This is confusing and has been suggested that it is a misfeature. I don't think so, but hopefully I'm open-minded. Let's hear what folks have to say. Matt ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ 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.