Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!news.cs.indiana.edu!bionet!kristoff From: kristoff@genbank.bio.net (David Kristofferson) Newsgroups: bionet.software Subject: Re: Usenet News reader for Macintosh Message-ID: Date: 14 Dec 90 01:12:38 GMT References: <1990Dec5.203047.74@bio.embnet.se> <1990Dec9.155719.6964@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu> <1990Dec10.134728.16496@nic.funet.fi> Organization: GenBank Online Service Lines: 39 To add to the voices about TheNews, a news reader for the Mac: I had a chance to try this out today and agree that for those who desire the Mac interface, this program will be viewed as an improvement over UNIX newsreaders and ANU-NEWS. However, I personally don't find programs like readnews, rn, and vnews difficult to run, i.e., although a Mac interface is a plus, I don't think that it is the biggest advantage over the UNIX software. The main problem with UNIX netnews software is the fact that one often gets stuck using editors such as vi or emacs to compose messages. TheNews is an improvement in that it uses a Macintosh-style editor. Unfortunately, TheNews also has the drawback of having to retrieve news from a file server. In my case, I tried the program using genbank.bio.net as the server (just down the hall over the Ethernet). I found the small delays involved in retrieving messages a bit annoying compared to reading news directly on genbank.bio.net using vnews. Also, since I am not annoyed by emacs, the presence of a Mac-like editor does not compensate me for the added delays. My verdict: if you are a budding network fan, like the Mac, and have someone to help you set this up, you will probably like TheNews. However, if you are an experienced user who is not intimidated by UNIX editors, the extra time involved in using TheNews will not be worth the different interface. After all, news should be something that one scans quickly. If you don't like mainframe/minicomputer editors, a better solution is to use a newsreader with a mouse-driven, cut-and-paste style editor directly on a faster machine that stores news. For Xwindows environments there are programs such as xrn with these features. -- Sincerely, Dave Kristofferson GenBank Manager kristoff@genbank.bio.net