cvs commit: src/games/fortune/datfiles fortunes

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:49:10 -0800
> From: Doug Barton <dougb at FreeBSD.org>
> 
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > On Wednesday,  2 February 2005 at 10:18:48 -0800, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > 
> >>>From: des at des.no (=?iso-8859-1?q?Dag-Erling_Smørgrav?=)
> >>>Date: Wed, 02 Feb 2005 14:16:40 +0100
> >>>Sender: owner-cvs-all at freebsd.org
> >>>
> >>>Ruslan Ermilov <ru at FreeBSD.org> writes:
> >>>
> >>>>  Modified files:
> >>>>    games/fortune/datfiles fortunes
> >>>>  Log:
> >>>>  Removed 1695 fortunes also found in fortunes2.
> >>>
> >>>I'd vote for simply merging the two.
> >>
> >>I'll admit to being old, but at one time fortune2 was supposed to be for
> >>longer fortunes while fortune was for one or two line entries. At one
> >>time fortune2 had some rather long entries. This is less important now
> >>than it was when we were (OK, I was) logging in on an ASR33 and it took
> >>8 seconds for a full line of text.
> >>
> >>Do we really want to merge them? (Probably) But should we think about
> >>keeping fortune as a separate file with all messages from fortune2 that
> >>are less than about 200 characters. After all, some folks are still on
> >>fairly slow links.
> > 
> > 
> > I don't think that anybody is on such a slow link that this makes a
> > big difference any more.  If they are, they've probably disabled
> > fortune on login anyway.  I'm in favour of merging them.  I'm also in
> > favour of adding your historical anecdote (which I didn't know about
> 
> I agree with both of these.

I don't really disagree, except for some of the very large ASCII "art"
fortunes that I believe are already removed. I do find 11 entries longer
than 2000 characters, but the longest number of lines is just 31 and
there are only 15 over 25 lines. (This in on a system that has the old
files and the numbers may be reduced by the removal of the ASCII "art"
files.) 

I was not especially trying to keep the separate files going as much as
to provide information as to why there have always been two fortune data
files.  None of those posting seemed to be aware of the history and the
fact that there was a good reason and it is now probably moot as I don't
think many FreeBSD users have ever even used an ASR33 (or it's
high-speed replacement, the TI Silent 700), let alone use them today.

And I don't need to hear form the MANY old-timers who have used them (or
still have one in the garage) or from the one guy who still uses one
because he "just likes the feel". 
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634