I got a pretty nice idea to simplify the use of mirror, and could maybe enhance it's effectiveness in news posting. Integrate it into news posting/reading aplication.
By example you want to post the file "Mirror.rar"
Your post will look like this:
Then you could add the equivalent of the .par file (containing the checksum of all parts) in:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (0/3)
And .pxx files in:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (4/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (5/3)
and so on...
If one part is missing, the newsreader will automaticly reconstruct it using others parts. Even better, a complete file could be checked part by part for corruption, so you can be sure right after the download than the file is OK.
What do you think about it?
dERMOTH
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Sounds great, now go add this functionality to all the news readers and all the news poster programs out there, and make all the users download the new programs before trying to download the posts and getting improperly combined posts.
You see the problem here. This just isn't going to be feasable for a long time.
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I tryed such kind of posts with Xnews. Messages ending with (0/x) are ignored so they don't add any garbage at the start of the file. And for .rar archives adding garbage at the end of the files (>x/x) will not alter the archive, even multiparts ones.
For the news compatibility, we could work with the author of PowerPost and Power-Grab, And have the maker of Xnews, the most used news program, either ignore parity posts or have support it.
Another scenario coule be add a Par: prefix or something like that so there is no compatibility issues at all.
dERMOTH
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Of course you're right. properly programed newsreaders will have no problems. Who wants to bet outlook users will be sending you death threats?
Lol, the fact is, you can't expect all the programs out there to handle this correctly, and even if you do, relying on it is only going to get people pissed.
Besides, until the point that all the programs do support this, and all the users have upgraded (hell freezes over), this just won't have anyone jumping to use it. And with no one using it, no demand, etc. we're stuck in a visious cycle here, that there's really very little point in getting into.
The fact is, you should know before you download the post whether or not it is good, and if it's not you can get the PAR instead. This takes the same bandwidth, works without extra newsreader/poster support, and has the advantage of being able to replace files that were missed entirely.
I beleive this is discussed in the FAQ, twice in the forums, and 5-6 times over the course of development discussions, and is generally agreed to be infeasable and rather pointless in the long run.
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You didn't read my message? I told you another way to do this would be to add a Par: prefix or something like that to messages containing parity information.
This way there is NOT ANY compatibility issues possible cauz the parity info is on another thread. Parity-enabled newsreaders will detect such messages and include it in the thread for decoding.
dERMOTH
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Ok,
1) that would just confuse the news reader into thinking that mirror.rar had been posted twice, and users getting the "repost" would get pretty pissed off at you. The problem will still be that it has to be understandable to ALL the users, or at least obviously different enough that they can ignore it if they don't understand.
2) This is still a huge pain in the ass for program writers at VERY little gain to ANYONE. All this would do would be to free you from manually finding out you needed par files, and getting them. This won't even save bandwidth as there's no need to get any of the original post when there's a (same-sized) par avaliable.
3) That thread does discuss it.. And pretty much shoots it down. "Yes it would be nice, but no there's not too much point, and no it's not worth the effort..."
If you do find a way to implement this that won't screw up existing readers, or confuse users, and you do get it supported in all the newsreaders and posters, then thanks, you've saved me maybe 10 seconds/week, but I suggest you find something more worthwhile to spend your time on.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I got a pretty nice idea to simplify the use of mirror, and could maybe enhance it's effectiveness in news posting. Integrate it into news posting/reading aplication.
By example you want to post the file "Mirror.rar"
Your post will look like this:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (1/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (2/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (3/3)
Then you could add the equivalent of the .par file (containing the checksum of all parts) in:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (0/3)
And .pxx files in:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (4/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (5/3)
and so on...
If one part is missing, the newsreader will automaticly reconstruct it using others parts. Even better, a complete file could be checked part by part for corruption, so you can be sure right after the download than the file is OK.
What do you think about it?
dERMOTH
Sounds great, now go add this functionality to all the news readers and all the news poster programs out there, and make all the users download the new programs before trying to download the posts and getting improperly combined posts.
You see the problem here. This just isn't going to be feasable for a long time.
I tryed such kind of posts with Xnews. Messages ending with (0/x) are ignored so they don't add any garbage at the start of the file. And for .rar archives adding garbage at the end of the files (>x/x) will not alter the archive, even multiparts ones.
For the news compatibility, we could work with the author of PowerPost and Power-Grab, And have the maker of Xnews, the most used news program, either ignore parity posts or have support it.
Another scenario coule be add a Par: prefix or something like that so there is no compatibility issues at all.
dERMOTH
Of course you're right. properly programed newsreaders will have no problems. Who wants to bet outlook users will be sending you death threats?
Lol, the fact is, you can't expect all the programs out there to handle this correctly, and even if you do, relying on it is only going to get people pissed.
Besides, until the point that all the programs do support this, and all the users have upgraded (hell freezes over), this just won't have anyone jumping to use it. And with no one using it, no demand, etc. we're stuck in a visious cycle here, that there's really very little point in getting into.
The fact is, you should know before you download the post whether or not it is good, and if it's not you can get the PAR instead. This takes the same bandwidth, works without extra newsreader/poster support, and has the advantage of being able to replace files that were missed entirely.
I beleive this is discussed in the FAQ, twice in the forums, and 5-6 times over the course of development discussions, and is generally agreed to be infeasable and rather pointless in the long run.
You didn't read my message? I told you another way to do this would be to add a Par: prefix or something like that to messages containing parity information.
Ex:
Mirror - Mirror.rar (1/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (2/3)
Mirror - Mirror.rar (3/3)
Par: Mirror - Mirror.rar (0/2)
Par: Mirror - Mirror.rar (1/2)
Par: Mirror - Mirror.rar (2/2)
This way there is NOT ANY compatibility issues possible cauz the parity info is on another thread. Parity-enabled newsreaders will detect such messages and include it in the thread for decoding.
dERMOTH
I'm not alone to have this idea, it have been discuted in http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=148838&forum_id=96207
Ill try to have the maker of Powerpost and PowerGrab working on this...
Ok,
1) that would just confuse the news reader into thinking that mirror.rar had been posted twice, and users getting the "repost" would get pretty pissed off at you. The problem will still be that it has to be understandable to ALL the users, or at least obviously different enough that they can ignore it if they don't understand.
2) This is still a huge pain in the ass for program writers at VERY little gain to ANYONE. All this would do would be to free you from manually finding out you needed par files, and getting them. This won't even save bandwidth as there's no need to get any of the original post when there's a (same-sized) par avaliable.
3) That thread does discuss it.. And pretty much shoots it down. "Yes it would be nice, but no there's not too much point, and no it's not worth the effort..."
If you do find a way to implement this that won't screw up existing readers, or confuse users, and you do get it supported in all the newsreaders and posters, then thanks, you've saved me maybe 10 seconds/week, but I suggest you find something more worthwhile to spend your time on.