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From: scott@tekcrl.TEK.COM (Scott Huddleston)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: news
Message-ID: <2039@tekcrl.TEK.COM>
Date: Tue, 27-Oct-87 23:06:46 EST
Article-I.D.: tekcrl.2039
Posted: Tue Oct 27 23:06:46 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 03:21:11 EST
References: <7567@reed.UUCP>
Reply-To: scott@tekcrl.UUCP (Scott Huddleston)
Organization: Tektronix Laboratories, Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 30

In article <7567@reed.UUCP> tekcrl!tektronix!reed!trost trost@reed.UUCP (Bill Trost) writes:
>I've played around with using mh to read news, and I've found the
>interface severly lacking when compared with something like rn.  ...
>...  Is there (some way to see) ...
>... the "next", "prev", "first", and "last" desired articles in a
>newsgroup ...

Yes, by an awful hack (in versions 5.x).  MH stores sequences
for read-only folders (like newsgroups) in ".context" in your mail
directory.  It has a limit of about 12 such sequences, after which no
more can be created or used.  One "cur" sequence per newsgroup (from
which next/prev are derived) uses up the limit pretty fast.  If you
delete ".context" entries frequently (by manual editing) and don't read
many newsgroups, MH is almost a tolerable news reader.

An even worse flaw (in v. 5.13) is MH fails to recognized large-numbered
files as messages (somewhere between 3000 and 8000).  I believe both problems
have been fixed in later MH versions (write if you need pointers).

MH's "pick" command will let you select messages by subject/keyword/etc.  
"rmm" is futile in a read-only folder, but you can copy messages with
"refile".  Or if space is tight, make a manipulatible newsgroup image
by setting up soft links from a folder of yours to all messages in a
newsgroup folder.

If anyone has developed a good MH interface for news, I'd like to hear
about it.
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...!tektronix!tekcrl!scott
scott@crl.tek.com