Newswatcher and Supernews

Jolly Roger wrote:
> In article <310320081549008715%fort514@mac.com>,
>  Charles <fort514@mac.com> wrote:
> 
>
> Oh I missed PayPal - good catch.  Then this is a possibility. If you
> figure out how to contact them and get an comprehensive answer, please
> post here for the rest of us!
>

Heads up to those paying for SN with Discover.   It does not seem
to be a payment option.   The Member Center Payment Info. has only
options for Master Card and Visa.

--
Clem
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over."
- Fudd's first law of opposition

In article <barmar-CC52F7.21514831032008@newsgroups.comcast.net>,
Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> In article <1ieow93.vrcw02gmz8edN%nospam@ab-katrinedal.dk>,
>  nospam@ab-katrinedal.dk (Niels Jørgen Kruse) wrote:
> 
>
> Change it to filter on Xref.  Change any commas in the filter to spaces
> and it should work fine.

Ehhh... Not quite. There's more info than just news groups in the Xref
header:

Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com uk.comp.sys.mac:568831
comp.sys.mac.misc:269881

Regular expressions in filters that match the Newsgroups header would
have to be significantly modified to work correctly with the Xref header
instead.

--
Please send all responses to the relevant news group. E-mail sent to
this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. I do not
read posts from Google Groups. Use a real news reader if you want me to
see your posts.

JR

In article <barmar-9DF61F.21480731032008@newsgroups.comcast.net>,
Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> I can't filter on Newsgroups, but you can get the same effect by
> filtering on Xref.  The only significant difference is that group names
> are separated by spaces instead of commas.

No, they're significantly more different than that:

Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com uk.comp.sys.mac:568831
comp.sys.mac.misc:269881

--
Please send all responses to the relevant news group. E-mail sent to
this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. I do not
read posts from Google Groups. Use a real news reader if you want me to
see your posts.

JR

In article
<jollyroger-A7A904.14390731032008@earthlink.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:

> In article <310320081533242551%fort514@mac.com>,
>  Charles <fort514@mac.com> wrote:
> 
>
> I've put in sales/support queries (regarding headers included in
> overview.fmt databases) to several of the larger providers today and
> will post the results here.

And here's what Supernews has to say about the situation:

On 3/31/08 9:41 PM, "Thomas at Supernews Support"
<support@supernews.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm sorry but our new Backend provider does not provide XHDR information a
nd
> currently does not plan to. All filtering will have to be done with the
> default headers
>
> Thomas
> Supernews Support

I assume "backend provider" means "Giganews".

Rest in peace, Supernews!  XXXXing Giganews... >: (

--
Please send all responses to the relevant news group. E-mail sent to
this address may be devoured by my very hungry SPAM filter. I do not
read posts from Google Groups. Use a real news reader if you want me to
see your posts.

JR

Dave Balderstone  <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
 
>
> Dunno. They've been spoken highly of in supernews.general and
> supernews.support. They use the filtering software that Andrew wrote at
> (the old) Supernews.

That is not correct.  They use a (probably current) version of the
filtering software I wrote some years ago and handed off to other
maintainers.  The filtering software Andrew wrote for Supernews was
never distributed, and is now owned by Giganews.

I just tried XHDR on some arbitrary headers on news.individual.net
and it worked.  Whether those are *indexed* is another matter, and
one best addressed by asking them directly.

--
Jeremy Nixon  |  address in header is valid
(formerly jeremy@exit109.com)

In article
<jollyroger-FFDBA0.22434631032008@earthlink.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:

> In article <barmar-9DF61F.21480731032008@newsgroups.comcast.net>,
>  Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>
> No, they're significantly more different than that:
>
> Xref: number1.nntp.dca.giganews.com uk.comp.sys.mac:568831
> comp.sys.mac.misc:269881

Sorry, forgot about the article numbers.  But I don't think they're
likely to impact filters.

One of the most common filters on the Newsgroups header is to match
messages posted to more than N groups.  In this case, the names and
numbers don't matter, the filter just counts the separators.  Change the
commas to spaces and it will work just as well.

And if you want to match on a specific newsgroup name, it will still
work just as well.  The :568831 won't break the filter.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

Jolly Roger  <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:

> Giganews does not include a lot of headers in their overview.fmt
> database. When news clients sent the XHDR and XOVER commands to the news
> server, the news server scans the overview.fmt database for matches. If
> the headers the news client specifies in the XHDR and XOVER commands are
> not included in the overview.fmt database, the server generates an error.

That's not necessarily the case.  In the days of yore, if the header was
not in the overview database, the server would read the article itself and
extract the header you asked for.  This is obviously a very inefficient
operation, so many "modern" servers don't do this anymore.  However,
technically it is not required that a header be in overview.fmt in order
to be returned by XHDR.

In fact, if you did a LIST OVERVIEW.FMT on Supernews it wouldn't have
included those "extra" headers that were indexed -- they weren't in the
overviews returned by XOVER, but were indexed so that they could work
with XHDR anyway.

So what you're looking for is a server that supports XHDR on those headers.
Basically *no* server will actually include them in the overview.fmt, so
the output of that command is a red herring.

--
Jeremy Nixon  |  address in header is valid
(formerly jeremy@exit109.com)

Barry Margolin  <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> One of the most common filters on the Newsgroups header is to match
> messages posted to more than N groups.  In this case, the names and
> numbers don't matter, the filter just counts the separators.  Change the
> commas to spaces and it will work just as well.

Except that newsgroups are listed in Xrefs only if the server you're
reading from actually carries them.

--
Jeremy Nixon  |  address in header is valid
(formerly jeremy@exit109.com)

In article <65dru0F2ct6udU2@mid.individual.net>,
Jeremy Nixon <~$!~( )@( )u.defocus.net> wrote:

> Barry Margolin  <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>
> Except that newsgroups are listed in Xrefs only if the server you're
> reading from actually carries them.

Since Giganews carrier practically all groups, that's not likely to be a
problem.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> In article <1ieow93.vrcw02gmz8edN%nospam@ab-katrinedal.dk>,
>  nospam@ab-katrinedal.dk (Niels Jørgen Kruse) wrote:
> 
>
> Change it to filter on Xref.  Change any commas in the filter to spaces
> and it should work fine.

I have a filter on Newsgroups and it works fine fetching news from
individual.net.

--
Mvh./Regards,    Niels Jørgen Kruse,    Vanløse, Denmark