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From: l-aron@obelix.liu.se (Lars Aronsson)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Smart newsreader
Message-ID: <1033@obelix.liu.se>
Date: Tue, 5-May-87 11:38:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: obelix.1033
Posted: Tue May  5 11:38:05 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 7-May-87 05:02:28 EDT
Reply-To: l-aron@obelix.liu.se (Lars Aronsson)
Distribution: world
Organization: Undergraduate CS & CE, Linkoping University, Sweden
Lines: 33
Keywords: gnu-emacs, lisp, news, mail, rn

Followup-To:

Smail: Rydsvagen 256 A:10, S-582 48 Linkoping, Sweden



Here's a description of a newsreader. Due to lack of time,
I will not be able to hack it myself. Perhaps it exists
already. Please, let me know! If not, I hope that my ideas
will inspire someone to do the job.

	Background:
I currently use Larry Walls "rn", which, according to
news.announce.newusers, seems to be the best so far.
I really enjoy it, its variables, and its follow-up and reply
commands. However, there are a few more functions I would want
to incorporate.

	Specification:
* Equal treatment of "messages" in the spool/news directories,
  in mailboxes under spool/mail, and in private mailboxes.
  This includes possibility to read mail and to qoute mail
  letters in news articles.
* Handling of several messages simultanously (sp?), e.g. for
  qouting or moderating. (What programmes do moderators use today?)
* Possibility to run in silent mode, e.g. for automatic storage
  of recipes.
* More programmability than rn.
* Possibility to read existing ".newsrc" and "active" files.

	Hints:
To write a news-reader entirely in shell scripts, would make it
too slow. To write it in C, like Larry Walls "rn", would work.
However, I'd rather go for the GNU-EMACS LISP. The only work
needed, is to write low-level routines to extract messages from
mailbox files, extract header information from messages and
to scan the ".newsrc" and "active" files. The newsreader then
could be written and modified by the user himself.