The rtfm archive is sort of two archives in one. For some
reason, the archiving scheme used under news.answers and the
other *.answers groups is rather different from the one used
under the other newsgroup names.
Under the *.answers groups in the archives, the supplied
Archive-name *is* used. For example, the comp.lang.c FAQ
list is archived on rtfm.mit.edu as
pub/usenet/news.answers/C-faq/faq
pub/usenet/comp.answers/C-faq/faq
pub/usenet-by-group/news.answers/C-faq/faq
pub/usenet-by-group/comp.answers/C-faq/faq
pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/news/answers/C-faq/faq
and
pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/answers/C-faq/faq
(that's six names for one file, by virtue of two additional hard
links and one directory symbolic link). In each case, the last
part of the pathname is derived from the FAQ list's Archive-name:
header, which in this case is
Archive-name: C-faq/faq
However, within the individual newsgroup subdirectory trees,
different names are used. By default, a untypeable jawbreaker
name is derived from the article's Subject: line; presumably
users are expected to know how to use mget to retrieve files by
these names, or to have a way to paste text onto their command
lines.
Since no one liked the jawbreaker names very much, an additional
secondary header line (more precisely, an additional secondary
header meta-line) was added to allow the FAQ list maintainer to
control the name used in the per-newsgroup directories.
The comp.lang.c FAQ list appears there as
pub/usenet/comp.lang.c/C-FAQ-list
pub/usenet-by-group/comp.lang.c/C-FAQ-list
pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/lang/c/C-FAQ-list
(that's three more names for the same file, again by virtue of
various links), and these names are specified by the secondary
header line
Comp-lang-c-archive-name: C-FAQ-list
I have to admit that the implementation of this feature threw
me for a complete loop at first; note that the *name* of the
internal header line is derived from the name of the newsgroup!
(At first I had tried to use the line
Newsgroup-name-archive-name: C-FAQ-list
; I think this is the only time I've had trouble with the
archiving documents. I think they've since been rewritten to
emphasize that "Newsgroup-name-archive-name" is a meta-name.)
All of this is described in the various news.answers documents,
but since the various archive naming schemes are unexpected and
confusing at first I thought I'd provide some additional
information. (Ping Huang, you're welcome to use any of this
text in your updates of those documents.)
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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