Subject: Re: Ignored newsgroups header.

From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:45:08 -0500 (CDT)

Well, it seems I was wrong earlier. In 3.96, when replying to Mail, you CAN get
pine to inject an article into the news stream by adding a Newsgroups header.
However, no References header will be created and you still MAY NOT add this
header in the customized-hdrs option. To add this header, you must postpone the
article, and edit mail/postponed-msgs to add it, then continue the postponed
message in pine to inject it with the header.

I also tried saving News in a mailbox, editing the file to remove the Path
header, and then replying in pine. I was NOT allowed to post a followup.

Allowing a reply to Mail to be injected into News appears to be new behavior in
3.96. I recall that 3.95 didn't behave this way.

Cool!

>From: Raja BrewHaHa <[email-masked]>
>Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 03:13:03 -0600 (MDT)

>Pine or sendmail limits the length of each To address to 180+some characters,
>so I must use the Newsgroups header to address over about 8 groups.

If you crosspost similar or identical articles to so many newsgroups, you are
going to attract the attention of a cancelbot, and your articles will be
cancelled on numerous news servers. Generally, you should never crosspost to so
many groups; two or three at the very most.

>>>What I'm saying is that Pine asks the question "post, mail, or both" 
>>>twice, and it's a little sloppy the second time. In fact, if the post
>>>fails, I might not want to mail, because that would mean I should duplicate
>>>the mailing on the basis of an incorrect newgroups header alone.

>>You aren't being clear; I'm not following. What second time?

>Post, mail, or both?...Both...
>Compose message...
>Message will be seen by thousands of readers. Really post?

>The first question belongs in place of the last, I think, and the option
>to mail as well should optionally depend on the post operation.

Are you trying to use Pine to post articles in a shell script? Pine really isn't
designed for that. You'd have to convince your news administrator that you have
a valid need to use inews directly.

---

From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:30:42 -0500 (CDT)

>From: "Adam H. Kerman" <[email-masked]>
>Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:45:08 -0500 (CDT)

>Cool!

I tried another experiment. I posted to a test group and sent a courtesy copy to
myself. The courtesy copy, of course, didn't have a Path, but it did have
References because I added it as described above.

Upon replying to the Mail message, I was allowed to post to News! Even if I
removed the References header, I was still allowed to post to News. Only when I
removed the News header was I only allowed to reply in Mail.

I tried removing various other headers: Return-Path (perhaps because it never
left my mail server), Message-ID (was it parsing for a pine message?), and
others, but I was always allowed to post a reply to News.

I don't understand the difference in behavior between this message, and replying
to an article I saved to a mailbox. In the latter case, I was only allowed to
reply to News if the Path header remained!

What is the critical header in this case?

---

From: Raja BrewHaHa <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 15:55:36 -0600 (MDT)

> 3.96. I recall that 3.95 didn't behave this way.

The version of 3.95 I'm using allows follow-ups to e-mail with just the
insertion of a newsgroups header: ^R while cursor is in the headers. I've
noticed only recently, that it does NOT do the references at ALL.

> going to attract the attention of a cancelbot, and your articles will be

One cancelbot, it.*, includes followup-to criteria. Fascismo-bot.

> a valid need to use inews directly.

I hav no shell account.

I don't understand why Pine can't do it. It's two questions, actually.
Post?
Mail?

I guess you COULD leave "Both" as an option (gone with the second
question). The user would be taking a risk if posting to NGs and a
listserv at the same time. This is slightly different from TIN on the
system, which checks articles before posting: not to the cancelbot or 
moderator level of course.

I am the son of a TV cartoon baboon.