C News patch of 7-Sep-1990

[Dean Brooks]

henry at zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:

>One of the reasons why we're reluctant to change our patch scheme is pure
>spleen against people who appear to be blindly prejudiced against it, as
>shown by the silly reasons they advance.

>- How do you know whether you have the latest C News patch?  Well, how do
>  you know whether you have the latest B News patch?  Numbering/dating has
>  nothing to do with it.  Actually, dating is probably ahead here, since
>  if you have last February's patch, you might suspect you are behind,
>  while having patch 12 tells you nothing of the kind.

What?  You are kidding right?  

>D1. You cannot predict the name of a patch from the name of the previous
>	patch.  This can be troublesome when dealing with poorly-run
>	software archives, which let you retrieve files but won't give
>	you a list of available files.

The truth of the matter is that a large number of archives are not complete.
Since C-News hasn't been posted netwide in quite a while, most people are
relying on archives when upgrading to C-News from B.

In addition, the lXsXXarge number of patches becomes a problem as there is
no way of knowing