Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ark1!ophiuchi!dsill From: dsill@ophiuchi.nswc.navy.mil (Dave Sill) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: review of news programs/readers? Message-ID: <1990Mar14.171009.10858@relay.nswc.navy.mil> Date: 14 Mar 90 17:10:09 GMT References: <1990Mar11.004538.2773@aai.uu.net> <90Mar12.150907est.1337@smoke.cs.toronto.edu> <1990Mar13.084110.1299@aai.uu.net> Sender: news@relay.nswc.navy.mil (News) Reply-To: Dave Sill Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren VA Lines: 65 Sumamry: xrn is Real Good News In article <1990Mar13.084110.1299@aai.uu.net>, leo@aai.uu.net (Leo Pinard) writes: > > What other news programs and readers should be added to the current list? > What's your favorite and why? Xrn is my favorite. Unfortunately, it's not for everyone: you have have X Windows and nntp. I'm a big Emacs fan, but I found Gnews to be too slow for my liking. If I *really* wanted an Emacs-based news reader, I'd look into GNUS. I found xrn first, and stopped looking. Xrn has three modes: one for subscribing/unsubscribing to groups, one for selecting the newsgroup to read, and one for selecting and reading articles. The latter two divide the window into three areas: a generally small (10 lines) scrollable list of newsgroups or article headers, a button panel, and a large scrollable text area for displaying article contents. Typically, one clicks on a newsgroup with unread articles from newsgroup selection mode to enter article mode. Xrn uses the XHDR nntp command to extract article header information efficiently-- without retrieving the entire article--and displays the headers in a list at the top of the window. The first article in the list is automatically displayed in the area at the bottom of the screen. Using buttons on the button panel, one can mark articles, read articles, post, perform subject searches, scroll around the displayed article, perform various kills, etc. The article summaries at the top can be presorted into alphabetical order, which makes it very easy to follow or skip threads. Clicking on a summary line causes the article to be displayed. A small button-panel at the bottom of the window allows one to save articles to a file (a pop-up window lets you enter the filename, defaults to the previous filename, and lets you edit the name with emacs-like commands), reply, forward, followup, cancel, rot-13, print, and toggle the displayed header information. (Xrn lets you configure which header lines are displayed automatically. I like getting only the From, Subject, Summary, and Keywords lines. Toggle-header lets me see the others when I need to, like when I'm trying to detect a forgery. :-) Selecting one of Reply, Forward, or Followup invokes the editor of your choice--or xrn's built-in emacs-like editor--filling in the appropriate header, signature, and "> " quoted article contents. Xrn is available via ftp. From the README: % ftp shambhala.berkeley.edu (128.32.132.54) user: anonymous password: guest ftp> cd pub ftp> binary ftp> get xrn6-8.tar.Z ftp> quit % uncompress xrn6-8.tar.Z % tar xf xrn6-8.tar ---- Dave Sill (dsill@relay.nswc.navy.mil) "Americans buy (and throw away) 500 million disposable lighters every year."