pst@nessus.UUCP (Paul Traina) (03/20/89)
How compatible are news-3.0 and C-news with B-news readers? I'm concerned in particular about the ammount of hacking I may have to do to vn (unless this has already been done... I may be lazy, but I'm not stupid :-) ). -- Home: pst@ai.ai.mit.edu, pst@sbitp.bitnet, ...ucbvax!ucsbcsl!nessus!pst Work: pst@anise.acc.com
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) (03/22/89)
In article <281@nessus.UUCP> pst@nessus.UUCP (Paul Traina) writes: >How compatible are news-3.0 and C-news with B-news readers? I cannot speak for 3.0. C News is 100% compatible with any reader that does not closely examine the middle field of the history file. We're using B-news readers (Australian readnews and rn) with C News without modification. -- Welcome to Mars! Your | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology passport and visa, comrade? | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) (03/23/89)
In <1989Mar21.180619.616@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) wrote: > In article <281@nessus.UUCP> pst@nessus.UUCP (Paul Traina) writes: > >How compatible are news-3.0 and C-news with B-news readers? > > I cannot speak for 3.0. C News is 100% compatible with any reader > that does not closely examine the middle field of the history file. This is also true of TMN-netnews, except a) if you use certain advanced TMNN reader features, your .newsrc will get some annotations that B news readers can't handle, and b) there are a couple of known glitches (for which I have documented workarounds) in using the TMNN transport layer and expire utility with rn. If you have my stuff, you won't want the old B news readers any more. Believe it, mine are upward-compatible and a *lot* nicer to use (in particular, my vnews has all the useful features of vn, rn and more added to it). Rn is a little stickier because I haven't been able to get word one out of Larry Wall and his code is a little too ... intricate ... to allow unassisted surgery. Instead, I've written an rn workalike called vrn; same command set but the visual presentation is more like vnews. All this is documented in detail in the TMNN distribution. -- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) Email: eric@snark.uu.net CompuServe: [72037,2306] Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718