LaTeX for Xenix (posting sources here is a no-no)

[John Gilmore]

glenn at extro.ucc.su.oz.au (G Geers) wrote:
> Well here it is. The next 14 postings contain the source...

I am all in favor of posting source code, but how about posting it to
the right newsgroup?  This is a discussion group, not a source group.
Why does that make a difference, you ask.  I'm glad you asked. . .

A lot of people like to archive all the sources that come through their
system -- they might need them later, and the articles only stick
around a week or two.  If you post to a discussion group, most of these
folks will not notice your sources, and they will get discarded rather
than archived.

A lot of other people are running on small budgets (either of money,
modem speed, or disk space) and are not able to get high volume
newsgroups.  If people start dumping sources into a discussion group,
the volume goes way up (each of those 14 messages was 45K -- the rest
of the postings in comp.unix.xenix on my system are 1-4k except one 9K
one).  This fills people's disks or gives them a surprise when the
phone bill arrives.  Then they have to stop receiving the group, even
though they want to participate in the discussion.

If you haven't checked out the sources groups, try it some time.  The
best one is comp.sources.unix, which has the highest quality material,
though it's sometimes slow to get something published there.  The other
groups for Unix stuff are comp.sources.misc and alt.sources.  (Yes,
Xenix stuff belongs in Unix newsgroups; Xenix is Unix, or close
enough.) Everything that gets sent to these sources groups is archived
at dozens of places around the net, so you can easily get it later.
Check the group "comp.archives" for details.

One other note.  When you port a program to Xenix, often the best thing
to do is to send back your changes to the original author (or the
current maintainer -- e.g. the guy who posted it).  If your changes are
clean, and the author isn't swamped with other stuff, the next
"official" version will already run on Xenix and you (and everybody
else) won't have to port it again.

Oops, I guess it's two notes.  If a program is widely available (like
TeX or anything posted to comp.sources.*) then if you really want to
post something, just post your patches to a sources group, then post a
short message to comp.unix.xenix telling people where the patches are.
The "patch" program is another widely available program, and everybody
who does any serious work on programs from the net will have or get a
copy.  If your variant of Xenix doesn't have "diff -c", which generates
"context diffs" (the best kind of patches), you can also get free
programs that will generate them, including GNU Diff and "cdiff".  See
comp.archives on how to get these.
-- 
John Gilmore      {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid}!hoptoad!gnu      gnu at toad.com
Just say *yes* to drugs.  If someone offers you a drug war, just say no.