john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck ) (10/10/88)
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
mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw) (10/11/88)
> Anyone have a 'vnews' that works with NNTP?
"vn" has nntp support which you can compile in or leave out.
Mike Khaw
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hardcopy: Teknowledge Inc, 1850 Embarcadero Rd, POB 10119, Palo Alto, CA 94303news@investor.UUCP ( Bob Peirce) (10/20/88)
In article <386@polyof.UUCP> john@polyof.UUCP ( John Buck ) writes: >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? > >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. > I recently started using rn after using vnews for several years. I think I am at patchlevel 31, so this may not apply, but my version only displays the header at 1200 baud and displays the first page at 19,200 baud. I don't know where the break point is. What I like most about rn is "=". My biggest complaint about vnews was wading through each header to see if the subject was of any interest. It could take several hours to read news and some interesting groups never did get read. With rn I do the same job in 15-30 minutes by getting the subject summary, junking what I don't want and reading the rest. The ability to follow subjects is also quite nice. BTW, I am running an old version of vnews, so I don't know if recent vesions may provide the same features I like in rn -- Bob Peirce, Pittsburgh, PA 412-471-5320 uucp: ...!{allegra, bellcore, cadre, idis, psuvax1}!pitt!investor!rbp NOTE: Mail must be < 30K bytes/message