Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!yale!cmcl2!polyof!john
From: john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck )
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: vn verses vnews verses rn
Summary: "rn" is a pain
Message-ID: <386@polyof.UUCP>
Date: 10 Oct 88 14:06:39 GMT
References: <632@convex.UUCP>
Organization: Polytechnic University, Farmingdale NY
Lines: 64

In article <632@convex.UUCP>, tchrist@convex.UUCP (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> >I have been reading news for about 6 months using vnews.  I tried
> >rn but found it very yucky...
> I don't understand what's "yucky" about rn.  I find its flexibility
> highly desirable.  Could someone explain what's "yucky" about it?  
> ...Everytime I track down their specific gripes,
> it's a case of RTFM.  
>     Tom Christiansen              {uiucdcs,ut-sally,sun}!convex!tchrist 


We have been using 'vnews' for years here, and recently someone suggested
we put "rn" up "because it is much better than vnews".  I put up "rn",
and found it "annoying" in several respects:
	BY DEFAULT: (which is what 90% of news users use)
	"rn" (patchlevel 40) will:
	_________________________
	+ display the entire first page of news, which can be quite
	  slow.  "vnews" only displays the header of the article, so you
	  can quickly 'n' it away if you choose to.
	+ if you choose to 'n' an article while it is printing, you can't
	  (by default, unless you specify -T).  Once again, if you are
	  on a dial-up or have a LOOOOOONG screen (60 lines), it wastes
	  alot of your time.
	+ no type-ahead (see 'n' above)
	+ if you choose to enable type-ahead (-T), it does not look at your
	  typed-ahead characters until the end of a screen.
	+ screen is not presented in an orderly fashion.  That is,
	  certain prompts sometimes appear in different places depending
	  on the length of the previous article.  This is distracting.
	+ If one were to RTFM as suggested, it would take quite some time.
	  It is about 60KB (at last look).  Not only is it long, but
	  the information presented is hard to absorb at one time.
	  (No way is "Joe User" going to be able to figure out what is
	   going on... He will need help from someone who DOES understand
	   it.)
	+ .newsrc file incompatibility with "vnews" (readnews)  Sometimes,
	  it would be nice to switch between news-readers for one reason
	  or another...  I would be nice if it could deal with "vnews"
	  .newsrc files the same as "vnews" does (or vice-versa...)

These are the things that come to mind quickly.  I understand that these
problems can be "worked around" using macros, special pagers, etc.; the
problem is the DEFAULT action is difficult to deal with, and to make even
simple changes to the operation of "rn" (from a user stand-point) is
difficult.  Being a 'systems' person, I can deal with "rn", but why should
I if "vnews" does what I want by default?

In fairness, some of the advantages of "rn" are:
	+ KILL files
	+ regular expression searches
	+ macros
	+ REMOTE (NNTP) access for other machines
	  This is a big plus, and, quite frankly, the only reason we
	  run "rn" (rrn) on some of our machines... Currently, it is
	  one of the few things that works with NNTP.
	  Anyone have a 'vnews' that works with NNTP?

I know I'm going to get some flak about these comments, but someone did
ask "what is yucky" about "rn".  If you are using "rn" and like it, fine.
If you are a "vnews" fan, fine.  We like "vnews".

john@polyof.poly.edu [128.238.10.100]
john@polygraf.bitnet
trixie!polyof!john