xev@GTE.COM (Xev Gittler) (09/27/90)
I think this was posted recently, but does anyone know of an NNTP based news reader for MSDOS? Mail responses preferred. -- Xev Gittler xev@bunny.gte.com
peterh@gollum.uio.no (Peter Hausken) (09/28/90)
xev@GTE.COM (Xev Gittler) Writes: > >I think this was posted recently, but does anyone know of an NNTP >based news reader for MSDOS? > >Mail responses preferred. > At Baylor's archive (bmc.tmc.edu) in the /nfs directory there are two NNTP based news readers for PC-NFS. news.exe.uu from baylor netnews.tar.Z from University of Oslo, Norway I use the last one every day to read news and it works perfectly allright in our environment. It has the ability to Read, Post, Followup (via NNTP), and Reply (via SMTP). There is one more thing to be done with it and that is adding a fullscreen userinterface. The current version is lineoriented. Maybe someone like to add a MS-Windows 3.0 interface as well? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NetNews - a NNTP based News program based on PC-NFS. Copyright (c) 1990 Kjetil Otter Olsen, Univ.of Oslo, Norway. All rights reserved. Please use and enjoy this program, but dont try to sell it!! NetNews can collect News from a NNTP server and present it to the user. It can also post messages via NNTP, answer messages via NNTP and send personal answers via SMTP. This is the English documentation for NetNews v.1.1x. A Norwegian version of this document exists. Contact the author if you need it. Se below for address. What do you need? You need a PC with PC-NFS. Preferably using ethernet as physical network and using YP for authentication. You must be "logged in" on the PC with NET NAME. ( nobody doesn't work..) PC-NFS LifeLine Mail is not a must, but it is recomended. NetNews is only tested using ethernet, it may work with SLIP. NetNews is only tested using YP, it may work without. How to install. Make the disk / directory with the distribution of NetNews your current directory. Then enter INSTALL. The install-program will then check and set up your environment. It will also make the apropriate directories and copy the programfiles to the correct places. If more than one user is going to use NetNews on the PC, you may add additional users with the NEW-USER program. Remember that it is the currently logged in user that is installed. What is what in NetNews? The distribution includes a number of files. The following files should be put in the path ( preferably the %NFSDRIVE%:\NFS directory ). NETNEWS.EXE The program itself. SMTPSEND.EXE A SMTP utility. NN.BAT A startup-file. TED.COM A small and fast editor from PC Magazine. TED.DOC "Documentation" for TED. In NN.BAT the correct DOS-variables can be set ( and reset ). Normally the editor you choose will be spesified in the NFSMAIL.RC file, or by using the DOS-variable NEWSEDIT. If none of these exist, TED is used. This editor is used to edit outgoing mail and is a must if you plan to post. The spesified editor must be an ASCII editor which can take the filename as a parameter. As a simple but good editor, TED from PC Magazine is supplied. It was choosen because of its tiny size and great speed. Personally i prefer FreEMACS.. In addition to that, a number of datafiles are needed to keep information from session to session. At the Univerity of Oslo we use PC-NFS LifeLine Mail, so the datafiles are located in the %NFSDRIVE%:\NFSMAIL\<username> directory. This directory is created by the LifeLine configuration programs INSTALL and NEW-USER. The files: NFSMAIL.RC The .rc file from LifeLine mail. NetNews uses information from this file. NETNEWS.RC The .rc file for the NetNews program. Contains the name of the newsgroups. All the programfiles and spesifications of the other files is included in this distribution. In addition to these files, you may have a signature-file named SIGNATUR.NN placed together with the two .RC files. This signaturefile can then be appended to outgoing mail by NetNews. How do I start NetNews ? Now you can start NetNews via the NN.BAT startup-file. Just enter NN and you are on your way. How do i control NetNews? NetNews has 2 command levels. Level 1 deals with groups and level 2 deals with articles within one group. You choose your group to read at level 1, and then you read the articles on level 2. The 2 levels has different prompts. Level 1 : ----------< * > Level 2 : ---< * >> The * will be replaced with a character indicating which command will be executed if you just press <ENTER>. The simplest way. Just keep on pressing <ENTER>. NetNews will then take you through all your unread News. But NetNews har a lot of different commands in addition to these. A short description follows. Level 1 commands: r read this group. ( This will take you to level 2 ) r# read article number # only. ( Returns to level 1 ) c catch up. mark all articles in this group as read. l list unread articles in this group. ltxt list unread articles in this group, containing txt. L List all articles in this group. Ltxt List all articles in this group, containing txt. G list newsgroups in NETNEWS.RC. u list newsgroups in NETNEWS.RC with unread articles. g# goto group number #. This number is internal to NetNews and can be seen by using the G or u commands. ( First collumn ) n next newsgroup ntxt goto next newsgroup which name contains the string txt. Example: npc will bring you to a group with pc in the name. b to the beginning. ( To the first newsgroup, like the g0 command ) p previus newsgroup. N next newsgroup with unread articles. w[#|date] List all new newsgroups on the server. w gives you new groups from the past 7 days. w# where # is } digit from 1 to 9 gives you all the new groups in the past # weeks. wdate where date is on the form YYMMDD gives you all the new groups sicne date. Wtxt List all newsgroups on the server matching the string txt. This is the only way to examine which newsgroups the server has. Example: Wpc gives you all the pc related groups. W. gives you all the groups... agrp add grp to your NETNEWS.RC file. Xgrp remove grp from your NETNEWS.RC file. m compose and post an article to the current newsgroup. mgrp compose and post an article to grp. q quit normally. Q quit normally and sort the newsgroups alphabetically. x abort ( Changes to NETNEWS.RC is lost ) !command Execute DOS command. ? HELP h HELP Level 2 commands: r read this article. r# goto and read article number #. q quit level 2 and return to level 1. sfilename save current article in a file. Sfilename save body of current article in a file. p goto previous article n goto next article. b goto the beginning ( the first article on the server ) f follow-up. Lets you compose and send an answer to the group. F Follow-up. Like f, but includes the original article in the answer. a personal answer. Lets you compose and send a personal answer by using SMTP. A Cc: is sent to you. A personal answer. Like a, but includes the original article. In addition level 2 has the following commands that are equal to level 1. l, L, !, c, m, ? and h. Notes on composing and posting. When you choose the m, f, F, a or A command, your editor is called upon to let you compose a message. To post the message, you save it from your editor ( TED does that when you exit with F7 ). You will then be asked: What next( s=send, S=send Signature, e=edit, other=cancel): s will just post your message, S will add your signature from the signature-file and then post it. e will let you reedit the message. Any other command will discard the message! When using the a or A command, you may edit the headers by editing the file C:\TMP\HEADFILE.TXT. To do this you will need an editor with capabilities of editing several files at the same time, FreEMACS is a good example of such an editor. But be careful, any errors in the header will cause the message to be discarded. What can you change? Some of the program variables can be altered by use of DOS-variables. The NNTPHOST is mentioned above. In addition to that, the names of the datafiles can be set independently ( but the directory must remain the same ). The DOS-variables are : MAILRC for the NFSMAIL.RC file NEWSRC for the NETNEWS.RC file SIGNFILE for the signature file ( SIGNFILE.NN ) MEWSEDIT for the editor. This will override the editor choice in the MAILRC-file. Making the datafiles by hand. Some people may want to make the installation by hand. This chapter describes how to do that. First thing to do is to make the NETNEWS.RC file. You can get a file containing ALL the groups on the server by entering NN -f FILE.RC where FILE.RC will contain all the groups. You must then use an editor to remove those groups that does not interest you. This can be quite an effort, because most servers have > 1000 groups !! An alternative approach is to use the NETNEWS.RC file made by install. It contains just a few newsgroups, but can act as a base for further expansion. The W command can be used to get an overview of the groups on the server.Please note that the current version of NetNews support a maximum of 128 groups only. Additional groups will just be removed. Secondly you must set up the NFSMAIL.RC file. If you are currently using PC-NFS LifeLine Mail, this is already done. If you must create it by yourself, the format of the file is as follows: key value Very simple.... The keyvalues that is important is : mailhost Which host to sent mail to with SMTP. domain What is the name of the domain editor What editor to use. As an example, you may look at the NFSMAIL.RC file made by INSTALL or NEW-USER. Finaly, in the NN.BAT file, you must spesify your NNTP-server. This is done by setting the DOS-variable NNTPHOST to the correct value. The value must be a server name ( and not an IP-number ). SOURCE: System administrators may contact the author if they want the source for NetNews. BUGS: No known bugs at the moment. :-) Please report all found bugs to the author! Any suggestions for further improvments are also welcome. NOTES: PC-NFS and PC-NFS LifeLine are trademarks of SUN MicroSystems Inc. TED is Copyright (c) 1988 Ziff Communications, PC Magazine, Tom Kihlken. The Netnews-program was inspired by the RED-program contained in the PCIP package. The first prototype was based directly on RED. The current version contains very little of RED, but to the authors of RED and PCIP; Thank you very much. AUTHOR: NetNews is written by: Kjetil Otter Olsen Central Computing Service University of Oslo, Norway Comments by E-mail to: kjetilo@gollum.uio.no or otter@ifi.uio.no or by "snail-mail" to: KJETIL OTTER OLSEN U S E POSTBOX 1059, BLINDERN N-0316 OSLO 3 NORWAY or maybe even by phone: +47 2 45 34 88 or fax: +47 2 45 57 70
lcz@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com (Lee Ziegenhals) (09/29/90)
peterh@gollum.uio.no (Peter Hausken) writes: >At Baylor's archive (bmc.tmc.edu) in the /nfs directory there are two >NNTP based news readers for PC-NFS. >news.exe.uu from baylor >netnews.tar.Z from University of Oslo, Norway I just tried to grab netnews.tar.Z, and the archive server says that it is not there. My request was "send nfs netnews.tar.Z". Is that file still there? Am I doing something wrong? If it is no longer there, is there some other place it is available from? Thanks! Lee Ziegenhals (lcz@sat.datapoint.com)