uucp and other unix stuff on a pc

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <878 at iiasa.UUCP> wnp at iiasa.UUCP (wolf paul) writes:

>Ah, but if it's slow READING news over a 200 cps modem connection,
>how slow do you think if would be if a fast file transfer took
>place over the same modem connection while you were reading the next
>article or even just header?

The trick would be to decouple them completely and use data compression
during the transfer.  First pick an article size that can be transfered
in slightly more than the amount of time that it would take you to decide
if you wanted it if you looked at the headers first.  Send anything smaller
over without asking, plus the headers and a small portion of the
larger articles.  If you read an incomplete large article and want the
rest of it, a query would be passed back and it would be injected into the
transfer in progress.  A provision would have to be made for batching
the queries, though, because unless you read very fast or have a very
slow modem, the articles are going to arrive faster then you can read them
so you will want to disconnect for part of the reading time.  For groups
where you only read a small percentage of the articles, you could send
only a few header lines (perhaps Subject, From, and Lines) automatically,
and then your reader would allow you to mark the ones to retrieve (on the
next connection if you choose to disconnect whenever possible).

Les Mikesell
 les at chinet.chi.il.us