Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!nc386!allbery From: allbery@nc386.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: Review of NN, a Usenet news reader Keywords: rn, .newsrc, b&d, S & M Message-ID: <1989Aug2.023920.4689@nc386.uucp> Date: 2 Aug 89 02:39:20 GMT References: <1836@papaya.bbn.com> <1150@sequent.cs.qmc.ac.uk> <1050@unocss.UUCP> <402@laas.laas.fr> <2794@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <404@laas.laas.fr> <2803@mace.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: allbery@nc386.uucp (Brandon S. Allbery) Reply-To: allbery@nc386.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Organization: North Coast Computer Resources, Cleveland, OH Lines: 131 In-reply-to: asd@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Kareth) Sigh. When my BS-meter wrapped itself around the stops the second time on this article, I just *had* to respond. In article <2803@mace.cc.purdue.edu>, asd@mace (Kareth) writes: +--------------- | In article <404@laas.laas.fr> ralph@nastassia.laas.fr (Ralph P. Sobek) writes: | >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 | | Yes, but you have to now about ^N. NN allows any novice to easily see all | similar subjects right there without having to know about any fancier | features. +--------------- No, you don't: put -S in the global RNINIT file and forget about it. The system administrator needs to know about -S, but a system administrator who doesn't RTFM is (IMHO) too dangerous to be allowed to administrate. +--------------- | em. Or you can just hit '*' on the current subject you are on and get it to | match all like subjects. Or of course, there is the auto-selection feature. +--------------- -S (^N) does this automatically. +--------------- | And along with the auto-kill, they are nicely configurable for a certain time | period (like a few days, months, or all the time) which I don't think rn can | do. +--------------- Not yet. In the meantime, check out the GNU Emacs implementation, Gnews. +--------------- | >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. | | But only one .newsrc can only apply to one machine right? The numbers in it | aren't transferable around machines are they? (Neither are nn's ither) Why +--------------- Duh. Ever hear of NNTP? And yes, it works even over heterogeneous networks, where it is not guaranteed that all newsreaders are available on all machines. +--------------- | would you need to read news on all the different machines? I've got a dozen | plus accounts on different machines, and only read from one. I only use one | newsreader (nn now) so I don't need to ever deal with rn or all the others. | Isn't that the way most people will work? Use one newsreader only? If I used +--------------- Depends. Some people really do use heterogeneous networks, and a single standard .newsrc format makes life a lot simpler for them. And nn gets roundfiled because it doesn't work right in that environment. +--------------- | do do that. But I don't see a exactly why nn needs to use a .newsrc format | unless you are specifically going to be using both nn and rn/vnews/etc. which | would seem odd to me. +--------------- Odd to you doesn't mean odd to everyone else. Sometimes it means "necessary" to others. +--------------- | looking at the NN rc file and the .newsrc file makes me think the .newsrc | version is messed up. NN's rc file is designed on a very structured basis. | Everything goes in a certain place, column, etc. A program can quickly flash +--------------- Oh, great, next you'll claim that the Unix file system needs hard-coded file types too. The .newsrc can be formatted for viewing via a simple awk or sed script or a trivial perl script. So? Some of us think "tools". +--------------- | doing things. But I too would like to see NN be able to support the .newsrc | way of things (even if it is slower). But as I see it right now, I don't see +--------------- Specious claim. The .newsrc may be "slower", but very little so -- and it is more robust, since a "this must be in this column" file format can be hopelessly deranged by a single missing/added space. +--------------- | >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 | | That it does. +--------------- Desirable to some of us in some circumstances. But nn isn't the be-all and end-all of news-reading technology, either. +--------------- | >what about TMNN(?)? Does it exist? I would like to see an advanced | | Haven't heard of this. +--------------- It's in late beta-testing, from what I hear -- it may be released soon. I dunno, I'm holding out for rn 5.0 and using Gnews right now because of its flexibility. +--------------- | >Readnews and vnews might be considered as first generation. Rn and NN | >can be considered as second generation news readers. So what does the | | I might go so far as to say NN is third generation with it's menu oriented | interface. +--------------- If that's your argument, "vn" gets the title -- nn is the newcomer. And the menu-oriented interface, as pretty as it is, is implemented atrociously. If lack of curses is a problem, lift the screen code from vnews, for crying out loud! Nn insisted on taking a longer-than-necessary time to redraw my screen, then discarded any keystrokes made when the screen was compelete enough for me to read but not quite finished yet because nn was repainting something that didn't need it. A few days of that and I removed it from my system, sources, binaries, database and all. If I ever need such an interface, be assured I will look to vn first. ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@NCoast.ORG uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu * This message brought to you courtesy the "Watcher" for the 4th NCoast * "ncoast #4 regenerates into ncoast #5 on 8/6/89!" -- the Watcher (aka nc386)