Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Cnews artnum in active file
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 90 07:12:43 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Aug17.071243.16518@looking.on.ca>
References: <1990Aug16.185023.26200@squirrel.mh.nl> <1990Aug17.034849.17801@zoo.toronto.edu>

In article <1990Aug17.034849.17801@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>of some stupid reader software.  (The lower number is basically an
>inadequate kludge that smarter software should never look at, but there
>is a lot of dumb software in the world, sigh...)

Want to explain this Henry?

Programs do need the minimum -- for creating reasonable sized bitmaps, for
example.

They can either figure out the minimum (by doing opendir on the spool
directory) or they can get it from the active file, which they already
read.

So you can calculate it 300 times per day in every reading session, or
once, in an upact type program.

So why is this dumb?
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
