I am considering some significant changes relating to size and efficiency of
the software, most of which will not change the format of the output, or the
way I perceive it is being used. THAT is the problem. How is it really
being used?
Please consider responding to this survey by E-Mail to me or posting to
the mailing list. The direction of any future development on this
software is dependant upon the response. I will be happy to sumarize the
results if the majority is interested.
Thanks,
Richard Schaal
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News Software: (C-News, B-News, INN ... etc. )
News Reader: (NN, TRN, XRN, PG, MORE, LESS .... etc. )
Operating System: (CP/M, MS/DOS, AMIGA, UNIX, LINUX ... )
Memory Size: ( in K Bytes or M Bytes )
Hard Disk Availability: ( M Bytes )
CPU and speed: (68030-33MHz, ?86-??MHz )
Are you using the premium service that requires the decoder:
Do you pay attention to {Rate in order of importance (10 very - 1 not much)}:
entertainment :
stock quotes during the day :
stock closing prices :
world news :
business news :
weather :
sports :
education :
One of the changes that I am considering is to drop the attempts to capitalize
the articles. This is a high overhead operation which is rarely successful.
This operation appeas to be most useful in the xpress.news.international.china
articles which would come through in lowercase. I would replace the
capitalization attempt with forced uppercase. What do you think?
Another change is to try to eliminate the multiple buffering going on in
the formatting of an article. This will greatly reduce the current
memory requirement for the software as well as tend to smooth out the
processing of articles and hopefully reduce the number of missed articles or
quotes due to the placement of the bulk of the processing between articles.
How many of you are getting these complaints:
T_EUNIT: unmatched
T_EFRAG: unmatched
from your X*Press news gateway software? I believe that most of these messages
stem from the attempt to process an entire news article before your receiver
overflows your buffers.
Do you want to get a summary of the responses?
-- Richard Schaal Motorola Computer Group M/S AZ43 DW278 2900 South Diablo Way, Tempe, AZ 85252 Voice: (602)438-3519 Fax: (602)438-3836 E-Mail: rschaal@phx.mcd.mot.com "This is a great place to work.... there's a going away party every Friday!"