Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!smoke.cs.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!moraes Newsgroups: news.software.b From: moraes@cs.toronto.edu (Mark Moraes) Subject: Re: review of news programs/readers? Message-ID: <90Mar14.003318est.234@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> Keywords: nn, Gnews, gnus References: <1990Mar11.004538.2773@aai.uu.net> <90Mar12.150907est.1337@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> <1990Mar13.084110.1299@aai.uu.net> Date: 14 Mar 90 05:33:52 GMT Lines: 179 About your questions on nn: As far as I know, nn is the only newsreader that needs a database. (Threaded rn does too, I think) As a result, installation needs some intervention from someone with root/news privileges. As for size, the database isn't small: It's 3275K for 35253K of news spool. I think the resulting speed worthwhile, especially since it is amortised over all nn users on our systems. The policy on unread articles is simple: nn will show you the articles that you select in the newsgroup menu -- those that you do not select are implicitly rejected, and thus marked as read. (The joy of skipping newsgroups by hitting the space bar:-) Those that you select and read are marked read, of course. Good for people that make one pass through news, and want to read very selectively. I believe 6.4beta allows you to mark articles as unread for future reference. [I've included ftp locations for gnus and gnews at the end of this note. Note that you need GNU Emacs to use them] On Gnews and gnus: leo@aai.uu.net (Leo Pinard) writes: >I already use emacs a lot. You mention powerful select and kill - is the user >interface very similar or different than nn? Could you say any more about the >difference between gnews and gnus. Are they different peoples version of the >same functionality? Or are they intended for different purposes? I've included a description of nn and gnus kill-files below from a local note on kill files. Someone that actually uses Gnews/gnus and likes them should comment. (It is possible that no gnus/Gnews users follow n.s.b, but I doubt it:-) Here's some more info on them, with the disclaimer that I've only used them briefly and not read the large manuals that each comes with. gnus has an interface similar to Emacs mh mode -- a small window at the top showing the author/subject of each message, and as you flip through those, the article text is shown in the large window below it. To select between newsgroups, you have a list of newsgroups, which you can move through with 'n' and 'p', and select one of them to read. xrn's interface is similar. (xrn is an X news reader, it uses NNTP) You can browse through the small window of headers, and select articles from there. Gnews is more rn-like -- it prompts you in the minibuf for each newsgroup, and when in a newsgroup, shows you the articles in the editing window, and the minibuf contains an rn-like prompt. You can hit '=' to get a list of all articles, like rn. The difference is that you can keep that window around for future reference, sort it, select from it. I found gnus much easier to install - The installation directions are more precise, there are fewer files to deal with. It would be nice if both were shipped with lisp files that could be invoked by emacs in batch so us non-Emacs-dwellers could compiled them without having to type lotsa commands at Emacs. Maybe even a shell script or, (gasp!) a Makefile. (Something like emacs -batch -l compile.el -f compile-gnews would be real handy -- then you wouldn't have to remember all the instructions, the sequence one has to compile them in, etc) On kill files: nn -- nn, unlike rn, will not show you an article unless you select it first. It presents articles in a menu, much like the '=' command in rn, and will allow you to select the ones you want, then shows you those articles only. This makes "kill files" less necessary, since you can avoid selecting articles by a specific person or on a specific subject. "kill files" in nn can be used for both automatic selection of articles, and automatic avoidance. To do either of these, press K (shift K) at any time. nn will prompt you about whether you wish to: Select or Kill? by Subject or Name? the string to use (if you type an ordinary string, it will be used directly (but case-insensitively), if you start the string with /, it will be treated as a regular expression) If you hit return, it will use the exact subject or person from the article you're presently reading. Regular expressions in nn are similar to those in the egrep command. See the manual page for egrep. This newsgroup or All newsgroups How long you want this kill to last (number of days or P for permanent) nn does not kill on contents of the article, only on the From and Subject headers. To edit the nn kill file, start your editor on $HOME/.nn/kill (for Unix systems -- I haven't a clue where it is on other systems) The nn manual page has an excellent section on kill files and the meaning of each question nn asks, in case it isn't obvious from the prompt. GNUS ---- GNUS is a newsreader written in Emacs Lisp - it runs under GNU Emacs. Obviously, you need to know Emacs to use it, so these instructions assume a knowledge of Emacs. M-k will edit the kill file of the current news group (C-c C-c ends). This is the normal way of doing it (it won't take effect until the NEXT time you enter the newsgroup). You can add lines of the form (gnus-kill "Subject" "foo") to mark subjects with the string "foo" in them. In place of "foo", you can have arbitrary Emacs regular expressions, like (gnus-kill "Subject" "foo\\|bar") These regular expressions are case-insensitive. To avoid articles by a specific person, say personX, (gnus-kill "From" "personX") Finally, add the line (gnus-Subject-delete-marked-with "X") to actually delete all the marked articles. (gnus-kill only marks the articles with X, it doesn't kill them) gnus-kill only works on a subset of headers, including From and Subject. --- My thanks to Brian Glendenning for explaining how GNUS kill files worked. Some archive sites for newsreaders ---------------------------------- [Internet sites can access through anonymous ftp; Others will have to uucp from uunet or from osu-cis, which also has most of these in its archives someplace. The format is hostname:pathname -- if pathname ends in a /, it's a directory containing the relevant files. Remember to set binary mode when ftp'ing, and remember to ftp outside working hours. People without nameservers will have to find out the addresses from somewhere -- don't ask me.] lib.tmc.edu:public/rn/ uunet.uu.net:news/rn/ umn-cs.cs.umn.edu:pub/news/nn6.4beta.tar.Z, dkuug.dk:pub/nn6.4beta.tar.Z, and sol.cs.ruu.nl:pub/UNIX/nn6.4beta.tar.Z terminator.cc.umich.edu:unix/nn/nn-6.3.7.tar terminator.cc.umich.edu:unix/nn/nn-patch10 terminator.cc.umich.edu:unix/nn/nn-patch8 terminator.cc.umich.edu:unix/nn/nn-patch9 freja.diku.dk:misc/nn-* (most recent patches, but it's in Denmark) uunet.uu.net:comp.sources.unix/volume19/nn/ [I believe gnus-3.12 is the most recent, on tut.cis.ohio-state.edu] tut.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/gnu/gnus ucbvax.berkeley.edu:pub/news/nntp/clients/gnu-emacs/gnus-3.11-tar.Z uunet.uu.net:gnu/gnus/ radio.astro.toronto.edu:news/gnus-3.11.tar.Z tut.cis.ohio-state.edu:pub/gnu/gnews/gnews-2.0-tar.Z ucbvax.berkeley.edu:pub/GNU/gnews-2.0-tar.Z ucbvax.berkeley.edu:pub/news/nntp/clients/gnu-emacs/gnews-2.0-tar.Z uunet.uu.net:gnu/gnews-2.0-tar.Z radio.astro.toronto.edu:news/gnews-2.0-tar.Z