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 			     RNALIB 2.0  
                 
             Copyright (c) 1989,1990 by Paolo Ventafridda


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	                 (Who Wrote It?)


The RNALIB software was developed to be used inside the italian uucp
network 'sublink' as automatic source for documents, papers, maps,
and also for 'netware'. A first release of RNA (1.0) was distributed
inside comp.sources.misc in August 1989; that relase has little to
share with the 2.0. I got a copy of 'netlib' software from AT&T, and
i kept their best ideas while designing the 2.0. I want to point out
that NO part of netlib was used, copied or cloned, except for some
kind of messages (thanks at&t grammars!). Actually RNA 2.0 might look
like netlib, from the user point of view.


                       Special Credits to:

         -----------------------------------------------------
       Marco Lorenzini, Bologna, Italy  (marlor@gear.sublink.org)
         -----------------------------------------------------

     He took the beta development since 2.0 beta 1.11. That version
     was 33K long...
     Contributed with precious extensions for file compression and 
     uusend/uucp usage through the 'via' field. We got to 52K ..!
     He also took the deep beta-testing of the program, doing a
     great job. 


Credits also to:

- Lele Gaifas, Rovereto, Italy	 (lele@idea.sublink.org)   

	sep.89
	Contributed with 'PrintSumm', 'CutMail', 'ListLib'
	'StripPermAndLink' and with many good ideas, following the project
	from very close. Actually under the IT Army.

- Enrico Palmerini, University of L'Aquila, Italy. (palmer@univaq.sublink.org)


Finally, credits are given to Kent Landfield (uunet!ssbell!kent)
for the 'Copyright' notice taken from its 'rkive' program, and to
Eric Grosse (ehg@research.att.com), author of the latest (?) version of
'netlib', AT&T labs. I could not install 'netlib', and i found
the documentation pretty hostile; that's why i made 'rna' ;-)
Though rna was made from scratch, i would consider netlib the logic
father of rnalib; i took some messages from netlib/mess which i 
found useful, along with some other good ideas. Header parsing was
deducted from RFC822. 

Rna 2.0 basic utilities were ready in september 1989. At that time 
RNA was a 19K shell script; i thought to be closed to the final version
when i found serious problems inside the code. I got sick of the shell
and decided to give up for a while. I started back working on the
shell script in january 90; it might sound stupid for a shell program,
but i found it hard to patch and to get to a working version. The 19K
code was now 33K long; rnalib 2.0 was at its beta version 1.09.
Then came Marco (marlor@gear.sublink.org), and we started working
together on the project, using e-mail for xchanging ideas and routines.
We got to beta release 1.16 in March 1990. Then i married, then it was
vacation's time, and finally we got to 1.17 which is the current version.

This is probably the longest shell script i will
ever write in my life; probably the last one also... I did my best to
make it readable and structured; there are a lot of comments which i
hope someone will read ;-)

				venta@i2ack.sublink.org
				september 1990

HISTORY
-------

Jul 89		Beta testing 1.0
Aug 89		RNA 1.0 in comp.sources.misc
Sep 89		basic utilities for the 2.0
Jan 90		final hacks on the source
Feb 90		Beta testing 2.0, marlor@gear adds new features
Mar 90          2.0 beta 1.16: 52K of code. Added 'pathsizing'.
Apr 90		sco Unix working release by marlor. Start of docs..sigh
---
Sep 90		the end


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