Re: SLUG-90 Proceedings are ready.

[TYSON@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Mabry Tyson)]

    Date: Wed, 22 Aug 90 11:08 EDT
    From: barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)
    Subject: SLUG-90 Proceedings are ready. 
    To: miller@GEM.cam.nist.gov (Bruce R. Miller)
    Cc: slug@Warbucks.ai.sri.com
    In-Reply-To: <19900822011831.4.MILLER@ARTEMIS.cam.nist.gov>

	Date: Tue, 21 Aug 90 21:18 EDT
	From: miller@GEM.cam.nist.gov (Bruce R. Miller)

	2) Does anyone object to my posting this? especially you DialNet'rs?
	The file is 72K, in scribe format. [If so; Alternatives?]

    I really don't think 72K mail messages are appropriate.  I especially
    hate waiting while Zmail sits there counting the lines.

I have to agree that the delivery time for a 72K message would hurt 
distribution of mail at SRI and elsewhere.

    Has anyone thought about splitting up the SLUG mailing list so that it
    would be easy to send mail only to those recipients who are not in the
    Internet.  Large files could be mailed to those people, while the rest
    of us could use FTP.

It would be easy to split out the DIALNET recipients and some of the
other groups (eg, most BITNET, some UUCP) but with MX records, it is
impossible to tell whether a particular recipient has FTP access.

    Another possibility is the use of mail file servers.  These are programs
    that accept mail that contains the name of a file to be retrieved, and
    mails the file back to the sender.  This technology is in use for many
    mailing list archives, public domain software repositories, the DDN
    Network Information Center.

That has all the problems of direct mail delivery if a significant percentage
of the recipients of SLUG ask for it.  As a matter of fact, it may be much
worse.  Much of the SLUG mail goes to redistribution lists and if each
recipient asked for mail directly, many individual mail messages would have
to be delivered rather than one.

Bruce, send me a copy of the message (or tell me where to FTP it from) and
I will put it on a public directory on AI.SRI.COM for people to FTP it.
(Btw, I hope the SCRIBE format file can be formatted on the Symbolics rather
than requiring real SCRIBE.)
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