Note about control.ctl new types (encodings and maxdocheckgroups)

[Julien ÉLIE]

Hi,

Here is a quick reminder of how encodings are delt with by INN 2.5.0.
control.ctl and contrl.ctl.local have these following types:


=item B</encoding/>

This type specifies the encoding of newgroup and checkgroups control
messages so that new descriptions could be decoded the right way.

    /encoding/:*:cn.*:gb18030

means that a description for a newsgroup in the Chinese cn.*
hierarchy will be decoded as though it were encoded in GB18030,
unless a charset is specified in the control message (in such a case,
the charset mentioned in the message is used).  However, it is possible
to override the mentioned charset if C<=force> is appended after
the encoding.  For instance,

    /encoding/:*:scout.forum.chinese:big5=force

means that the description for scout.forum.chinese will always
be decoded as though it were encoded in Big5, no matter the charset
of the corresponding control message.

The default value when no encoding is mentioned (or when the
specified encoding is unknown) is C<CP1252>.

The last matching line for a given newsgroup name in F<control.ctl>
will be used.



=item B</localencoding/>

When this type is used, the line consist of only two fields.  The default
value when this type does not appear in F<control.ctl> (or when the
specified charset is unknown) is equivalent to:

    /localencoding/:utf-8

It means that new descriptions in the F<newsgroups> file will be written
using UTF-8.  And B<controlchan> will try to read existing descriptions,
so as to see whether they should be updated, as though they were encoded
in UTF-8.

The last matching line in F<control.ctl> will be used.



=item B</maxdocheckgroups/>

This type specifies the maximum number of changes that could be made
at one time by a checkgroups before bailing and mailing the changes
to the admin if no log file was specified.  The default value is C<10>.

    /maxdocheckgroups/:*:*:10
    /maxdocheckgroups/:*:fr.*:20

Such a configuration means that a checkgroups containing 15 changes
for the French fr.* hierarchy (newgroups to add, remove or change
the status) will be automatically honoured whereas a checkgroups
containing 15 changes for france.* will only have the required
changes mailed or logged.

The last matching line for a given newsgroup name in F<control.ctl>
will be used.


-- 
Julien ÉLIE

« Les Français ne parlent presque jamais de leurs femmes ; c'est
  qu'ils ont peur d'en parler devant des gens qui les connaissent
  mieux qu'eux. » (Montesquieu, _Lettres persanes_)