Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!mcvax!inria!laas!nastassia!ralph
From: ralph@nastassia.laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Review of NN, a Usenet news reader
Summary: As stated previously, to each his own
Keywords: rn, .newsrc, b&d, S & M
Message-ID: <404@laas.laas.fr>
Date: 27 Jul 89 13:04:23 GMT
References: <1836@papaya.bbn.com> <1150@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> <1050@unocss.UUCP> <402@laas.laas.fr> <2794@mace.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@laas.laas.fr
Reply-To: ralph@laas.laas.fr	(Ralph P. Sobek)
Organization: LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France
Lines: 55

In article <2794@mace.cc.purdue.edu> asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) writes:
|  In article <402@laas.laas.fr> I write and quote:
|  >|  I like the method of reading that nn uses: I can see all subjects and
|  >|  pick from the ones that look interesting.  RN drives me nuts showing me
|  >|  three lines for each article whether I care about the subject or not, and
|  >|  no overview.  NN also sorts by subject.
|  
|  >Have you never heard of rn's '=' command, which the user may
|  >customize.  Mine prints out subject, length, and author.
|  
|  Just make sure you have a pencil and paper handy so you can write down all the
|  numbers of the subjects you want to read.  NN nicely eliminates that by making
|  the computer your pencil and paper.  It also, IMHO, sorts everything nicely so
|  all related subjects are next to each other, eliminating searching thru all
|  the subjects for the same thing.

Likewise for rn!  If you find an interesting subject, with ^N you get
the next message with the same subject.  Don't sell it short; it
*also* has powerful regexp patterns that you can enter (or better yet
program into the system).

|  >One reason that we have never bothered installing NN was for its
|  >non-standard .newsrc file format.  By the way, has this been changed
|  >in version 6.3, or the succeeding patches.  Thanks.
|  
|  In maybe 6.4 or so, whenever Kim gets to it, NN will support leaving certain
|  articles unread (right Kim?), which will probably nead a different format,
|  maybe even the *standard* .newsrc file format.  What's the big deal about
|  having a different format anyways?  If you use NN why even need to bother with

Kareth, please don't be so naive.  One needs a *standard*, even
possibly a *standard* .newsrc file.  When, for example, you're on a
network with a plethora of newsreaders which are not uniformly
distributed over all machines, but *all* can read your .newsrc file.
Furthermore, if you go over certain groups regularly with 'cron' it
would be overkill to use either NN or rn.

Don't get me wrong.  I do not believe that `rn' is the sendall for all
us news users.  I'm sure that NN has some desirable features.  And
what about TMNN(?)?  Does it exist?  I would like to see an advanced
news reader running under X-windows or Sunview which would be
programmable, and would have high-level and efficient KILL mechanisms.
After all, one spends most one's time straining 90% of the news, just
to get at the 5-10% that one's interested in.

Readnews and vnews might be considered as first generation.  Rn and NN
can be considered as second generation news readers.  So what does the
third generation news reader offer us?

Ralph P. Sobek			  Disclaimer: The above ruminations are my own.
ralph@laas.laas.fr			   Addresses are ordered by importance.
ralph@laas.uucp, or ...!uunet!mcvax!laas!ralph		If all else fails, try:
SOBEK@FRMOP11.BITNET				      sobek@eclair.Berkeley.EDU
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