Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!pacbell.com!ames!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sources.d Subject: Re: lots of trn problems Message-ID: <1990Dec30.145058.20314@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 30 Dec 90 14:50:58 GMT References: <1990Dec29.015540.3445@kithrup.COM> <4046@dah.sub.org> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 54 ed@dah.de.intel.com writes: > I also had a lot of trouble getting trn to run, and (between core > dumps) I didn't really like the interface much. I don't understand all > the fuss over trn. I find that nn is much more robust and if I'm not > mistaken also follows "threads". Would someone who has used both like > to comment? Are nn and trn comparable in features? Am I missing out on > something trn does that nn doesn't do? Well, I've used nn a little; I found it too big a stretch from rn; at the time they maintianed incompatible .newsrc files, though that's been fixed, but the big problem I found was a fairly opaque user interface, and a nasty habit of getting direct and inverse video backwards as often as not. Lots of people swear by nn, which _does_ follow threads, but its big claim to fame is preprocessing kill file commands, so you never see the articles at all. I don't like, or use, kill files. The trn article selection interface is very much like the rn "=" command interface (but with the ability to select stuff as you go along, rather than after you've left the "=" listing), cleaned up and sorted by threads, and with the ability to mark stuff to read or discard by whole threads at a time with a single keystroke. That makes it worth my time to go through even multiple hundred current unread article newsgroups and nuke the threads I want to miss, which really doesn't take two minutes at 1200 baud, and leaves me in complete control of what I read or don't and usually with half the articles discarded quickly. Example: some threads I would kill, but some authors I'd read even in those killed threads. With trn, I can see who wrote what in the threads, nuke the whole thread if no one interesting is contributing, or read it and threadwalk quickly to the author I want if s/he's there. For the experienced rn user who is not a kill file fan, trn is a much easier move. It does have a few bugs, but not important to its operation. It often displays wildly inaccurate counts of articles left to read, it is a lot of fun to see that I am seeing a windwo of articles 167% of the way through the total display, and it walks the threads in order, but between threads out of arrival time order (backwards, I've been told). Perhaps as a result, it can give you an "end of newsgroup foo.bar" message while several threads remain to be read, but it tells you that, too. As I said, these bugs are harmless, and the gain in newsgroup reading efficiency is wonderful. I'm making it twice as far through my active list in my .newsrc, these days, and I still retain complete control over what I read, without kill file overenthusiasm. Kent, the man from xanth.