[Leica] Cleaning LUG digest files

[Tom Bryant <tbryant@pars5.gsfc.nasa.gov>]

Hi Luggers,

    Several people have commented on the bandwidth that LUG messages take up,
especially in the digest.  This is mostly due to the vact that most browsers,
i.e. netscape, copy the entire text of the message that you're about to reply
to into the text of your message, prefacing it with an ">".  For example:

> When you quote someone's two hundred and thirty five line post just to add
> your two lines of "Me Too" to it, you really waste bandwidth.  Most of us
> are very good at SNIP-ing the unnecessary stuff, but there are a couple of
> us who just don't seem to get it.  If its not too much to ask, could those
> who just hit "Reply To" also take a minute to edit out the majority of the
> quoted letter??  It seems every digest I get is about 50% repeated stuff,
> most in toto.

    I have developed a program that will remove all lines that begin with a
">", thereby cutting the size of a LUG digest to abot 25 - 50 % of its
original size, depending on the amount of copied text.  If you were to run the
program on this file, the above paragraph would be eliminated.

    The program is written in C, with C++ style comments.  Any good C compiler
can make it an executable that will run fine on your machine.  Just email me
for the source, and I'll get a copy to you: tbryant@wizard.net. If you're
running Linux, or Solaris 2.5+ , I can even send you an executable.

    Apropos what to charge for photographic services, computer services are
downright wierd.  The utterly suprising, uncapitalistic, fact is the best
software out there is free.  Linux, GNU, Apache.  All free, and IMHO, the
best, or at least the most robust software out there.  (Microsoft's products,
while being far glitzier, also are much more bug ridden.)  Anyway, my little
LUG digest cleaner program is free, too, and hopefully worth more than you'll
be paying for it.

    The LUG maintainer has even tried to limit the size of LUG posts.  In this
he was successful, as my original posting of this message, which included the
program, was deleted.  You will have to email me for it.

    I hope that this makes it in.

    Tom