Subject: Re: RESULTS: newsgroup creation straw poll.
From: [email-masked] (Kevin F. Quinn)

1 Sep 1998 13:21:51 -0700
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Geoffrey Noer wrote:

> Personally, I like making a distinction between the name of the
> emulation layer "Cygwin32" and the name of the ported packages
> "GNU-Win32".

> Regardless of the location, how would the topics best be covered?

I think it's generally considered A Good Idea, if the number of
newsgroups is kept to a minimum initially, and split as the traffic
dictates later.  So how about

comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin32
(general discussion - could be .gnuwin32.misc)
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin32.announce
(moderated announcements)

which could later (perhaps) evolve into:

comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.announce
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.cygwin
(issues related to the cygwin emulation layer)
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.cygwin.porting
(issues related to porting using the cygwin dll)
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.mingw
(issues related to the mingw development environment)
comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.mingw.porting
(issues related to ports not using cygwin.dll)

and so on.  It makes most sense to split the hierarchy along lines that
minimise cross-posting (which would make the split ineffectual).  This
means watching the traffic and analysing the applicability of existing
traffic to the various options on splitting.  For example, in the above
list it may happen that most porting discussion is relevant to both
cygwin and mingw - in which case separate groups could be
counter-productive, and comp.os.ms-windows.gnuwin.porting may be a
better choice.  However these decisions can only be taken usefully in
light of the previous traffic.

On a last note, I don't think the volume of traffic on this list
warrants the creation of more than a discussion group and an announce
group, at the present time.

One more issue comes to me, and that is the "32" suffix.  Perhaps it
would be a good idea to drop the "32" from the newsgroup names?  Note
that comp.os.ms-windows doesn't specify 16 or 32.  Perhaps it should be
dropped for the "gnuwin" part, but kept for the "cygwin" part?

Kev.
-- 
Kevin F. Quinn
Web: http://www.banana.demon.co.uk/
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