weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Matthew P Wiener) (02/19/88)
For those interested, Gnews 1.0 is available for beta testing. You can get it via anonymous ftp from ucbvax, file /pub/gnews-1.0-tar.Z. The compressed tar file is ~200K, and the distribution unpacks to ~240K of .el source plus the .elc files plus a few more files. Only true Emacs weenies need apply. (Indeed, it's under consideration as an eventual FSF replacement for rnews.el.) Gnews is an ELisp-coded NNTP-based rn-clone, in other words, it's an Emacs implementation of rrn. Essentially all of rrn is there, plus innumerable extras: the most noticeable ones are that indexing has become its own separate mode, replying to articles is supported with post/mail-modes (which are much better than the usual Emacs mail-mode), newsgroup name completion/abbreviation exists, and the ability to trace back conversations through referenced articles. The biggest extra, im- possible for me to quantify or describe, is the mere fact that it is compatible with GNU Emacs. (Code written for reading off a spool directory is included, but I have not been able to test it.) Unfortunately, I'm generally not in Berkeley all that often this semest- er--I'm shortly going back east again, and won't return for yet another exciting month from the exciting suburbs of exciting Philadelphia. A few goodly people have been playing with Gnews for the past several months, so questions posted to comp.emacs aren't headed into a vacuum. (I would appreciate if such were also e-mailed to weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu just the same, for even if it's "dumb" and easily answered in my absence, I'll still need to know what needs better documentation.) ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 Without NNTP, the brahms gang itself would be impossible.--Erik E Fair