Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!lamy
From: lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: Review of NN, a Usenet news reader
Message-ID: <89Jul6.072324edt.10388@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
References: <1836@papaya.bbn.com> <1150@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> <1989Jul6.024247.21653@DSI.COM>
Date: Thu, 6 Jul 89 07:23:19 EDT

syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein) writes:

>1.  All the command are capital letters.  Those are hard to type,
>and easy to forget and hit the lower case equivalent, thus marking
>articles on and off I had no intention of doing so.

I seldom use the capital letter commands.  I wrote a rntonn script
that created an nn init file that made nn present the articles in
the same sequence rn does, with new newsgroups at the bottom (you
only need it once).   I mostly go around hitting blank to skip
menu pages and lower case letters to pick the articles I read.  . and
arrow keys aren't shifted on most terminals, either.  rntonn is enclosed
at the bottom. BE WARNED THAT IT WILL CATCH UP ON ALL YOUR NEWSGROUPS
AND THAT I DECLINE RESPONSABILITY IF IT DOES ANYTHING YOU DON'T LIKE
TO YOUR NEWSRC.  BACK UP YOUR .newsrc YOURSELF BEFORE USING.

>I often read an article, decide I want to reply, then go look for 
>other replies to this article.  I found that also harder to do using
>nn.  Again, I had to guess in advance that this is what I wanted to do.

use the "l" command.

>I also miss the 'header' mode (or v mode) of rn,when I want to check out
>a message.

that's the "h" command.

>I ran nn for one day and went back to rn.  It didn't seem to offer
>me much for all the administrative work it took to keep it running.

RTLM (L=large:-).  There is a lot of immensely useful stuff in there.  I've
been able to resubscribe to many newsgroups I had abandoned because of
high noise.  All the administrative work, really?

nn may not be for everybody, just like rn, or any news reader one may design
(after 4 years of heavy use, rn was starting to drive me nuts).  The news
reading style it offers *is* different, no doubt about that one.

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy
AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh -
# rntonn - make a .newsrc that nn will understand.
#	   create a .nn/init file that shows the groups in the same order
#	   rn does, and shows new newsgroups at the end.
#
PATH=$PATH:/local/lib/news:/news/bin ; export PATH
rmlist='/tmp/rntonn.*'.$$
cp $HOME/.newsrc /tmp/rntonn.1.$$
awk '{print $1}' /tmp/rntonn.1.$$ |
sed -e 's/\([^:!]*\)\([:!]\).*/\1 \2/' |
cat -n | sort +1 >/tmp/rntonn.2.$$
if [ -s /news/lib/active ]; then
	ACTIVE=/news/lib/active
else
	if [ -s /local/share/news/active ]; then
		ACTIVE=/local/share/news/active
	fi
fi
sort < $ACTIVE | join -a1 -j2 2  -o 2.1 1.1 2.3 1.2 - /tmp/rntonn.2.$$ |
awk '\
{if (NF != 2)\
   printf("%s %s%s 1-%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4 ); \
 else \
   print "99999", $1 "!"; \
}' - | sort -n | awk '{print $2,$3}' > $HOME/..newsrc
mv -f $HOME/..newsrc $HOME/.newsrc

(
if [ -s $HOME/.nn/init ] ; then
   sed -e '/^[ 	]*sequence[ 	]*/q' < $HOME/.nn/init
else
   echo 'map menu ^n line+1'
   echo 'map menu ^p line-1'
   echo
   echo sequence
fi
sed -n '/:/s/:.*//p' $HOME/.newsrc
echo NEW
) > /tmp/rntonn.1.$$
mv -f /tmp/rntonn.1.$$ $HOME/.nn/init
rm $rmlist