[comp.emacs] better 'rnews.el'???

michael@corona.UUCP (08/31/87)

I am using GNU Emacs (18.41 on VAX and SUN) quite heavy and
happily.

Now I am wondering, whether I can use Emacs to read the NEWS? I
tried 'rnews', but it was rather disappointing. So my question:

      - Is there anywhere out there a reasonable 'rnews' news
      reading frontend (perhaps comparable to 'rn')??

  Thanks in advance

  Michael Schmidt
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smithln@cs.rochester.edu (Neil Smithline) (09/04/87)

I no of no library besides rnews for reading news in GNU Emacs.  I
don't think it would be tough for someone to slightly modify mh-e to
work on news files.  As of now it can be used for reading news but can
*NOT* delete, rename, move or refile them - the new mode would have to
take the .newsrc file into account when reading the articles in.  It
doesn't sound too difficult to do (I know - if it is so easy then why
don't I do it - I won't even bother making excuses for myself :-)
although I haven't looked at the code for mh-e - Neil

-- 
Neil Smithline
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narten@percival.cs.purdue.edu (Thomas Narten) (09/06/87)

I have a completely different rnews package that I wrote a while back.
Its interface is quite different than that in the distributed package.

It is based (very) loosely on the mh concept.

You first read all news, which puts subject lines in a file somewhat
like a folder in mh. You then display articles that you are interested
in. The features:

1) Completely compatible with other news programs. It "reads" news
using the "-n" option to readnews. This actually reads the news,
updates the .newsrc file, etc. All subject lines go into a newsbox
file. A newsbox mode allows you to display individual articles, etc.

2) You can easily redisplay previously seen articles. This allows one
to scan all articles in a group before responding to any one in
particular.

3) It has hooks to the mh-e package to reply directly to a news
article using mh. This is useful for replying privately to the poster,
or for forwarding articles to interested parties.

4) I can quickly scan lots of news groups. I generally view an article
only if the subject line looks interesting.

I have placed a copy in pub/narten/rnews.el on gwen.cs.purdue.edu. Use
anonymous ftp to retrieve it. I will post it if there is enough
interest, but I would first like to get comments back from a few users
so I can fix any obvious problems.



-- 
Thomas Narten
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