Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!aplcen!haven!mimsy!nems!dtix!curt
From: curt@dtix.dt.navy.mil (Welch)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Why doesn't someone create and easy to use rn?
Message-ID: <183@nems.dt.navy.mil>
Date: 12 Oct 89 19:14:56 GMT
References: <1083@venus.misemi>
Sender: news@nems.dt.navy.mil
Reply-To: curt@dtix.dt.navy.mil (Curt Welch)
Distribution: na
Organization: David Taylor Research Center, Bethesda, MD
Lines: 70

In article <1083@venus.misemi>, chiprout@venus.misemi writes:
>Is there no better alternative to rn?

From all the postings, you see that there are many alternatives
to rn.  You must understand that for a "typical" Unix user (a
programmer), rn is a great program, is easy to use, and has 
lots of great features.  Just because rn doesn't fit your needs
doesn't mean that it isn't the "best" program around.

>Seeing that network news is so
>vital to communication, why doesn't some good programmer out there
>create a news interface that is easy to use, easy to understand (with --
>God forgive me -- a good help facility) and clear instructions.  man rn is
>almost useless because you have to understand the term that are used
>before you read it.

I have been working on a news reader called tnews for the past 6 months
to address some of these problems for our users.

The office I work in supports 7 Unix systems that are used for "office
automation".  Most of our 1000 users don't even know what Unix is, let
alone understand concepts like "standard input", "processes", and
"pipes".

Tnews is designed to be "better" than rn for our users (and our support
staff) but certainly not for all users.  It is designed to be simple to
use and easy to learn.  rn is a very nice program for people that are
used to dealing with Unix but you do have to spend some time reading
the manual to learn to control it.  tnews is designed to be as simple
and harmless as possible for the naive user, but yet be powerful enough
that you won't have to switch to rn once you learn what news is all
about.

Tnews is a screen oriented program.  The first screen you see is a list
of newsgroups (and their descriptions) that you are subscribed to.
When you chose a news group to read, you are shown a list of articles
in that group.  You can then select and read articles.  Tnews makes it
very obvious to the user "where" he is, and makes it very easy to
re-read articles.

There is a menu of commands at the bottom of each screen, but only the
basic commands are listed there.  You can do all the basic functions of
reading, posting, and replying using only the few basic commands listed
in the menus, but, like rn, there are many other commands for doing the
more advanced functions (which are listed in the help screens).

Tnews is completely compatible with rn and the rest of news.  It uses the
.newsrc file, and can read news locally or through NNTP (with the same
program).

Tnews is still under development, but is about to be released to our
users.  So far, it seems to be meeting its design goals.  New users
that are shown both tnews and rn prefer tnews.  Of the users that have
already learned to use rn, about 25% switch to tnews.

It might be possible to release tnews to the public.  If you have any
interest in it, let me know.  It is currently running under ULTRIX 2.2,
on VAX systems and under BSD 4.3 on ISI (68020) systems.

>I am not a programmer but a frustrated user.  I have better things to
>do with my time.  This posting shouldn't even exist.

Programmers have better things to do with their time than to write free
software for you.  You should consider yourself lucky to have USENET at
all.  To commercially develop a news reader that is "better" than rn
will cost around $100,000.  If you have that type of money to spend,
drop me a line.

Curt Welch
curt@dtix.dt.navy.mil