gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/05/91)
In some article I wrote in the recent past, I mentioned that the current
version of TheNews (a program for reading usenet news from a Mac via NNTP) was
now 2.02. Several people asked me for it, enough that I got tired of mailing
it out.
Bill Cramer (the author) had sent this off to sumex, but apparently it hasn't
shown up there. I checked with him and decided to make it available on my own
machine.
So, use anonymous ftp to eclipse.its.rpi.edu
and check directory Mac
for the file TheNews2.02.sit.hqx
RPI doesn't have any connection at all to this, no guareentees are given nor
implied. I'm just making it available so people can check this out without
everyone mailing it to everyone else. RPI doesn't endorse the program in any
way either. RPI probably doesn't know about the program exists. It's up to
you to decide if you want to use it.
TheNews is shareware. If you use it, send the money to the address given in
the documentation. You can send me money too, if you like, but I have no real
connection to the program. I just like to spend money...
- - - - - - - -
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USAgad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/05/91)
In article <fkth++m@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: > In some article I wrote in the recent past, I mentioned that the current > version of TheNews (a program for reading usenet news from a Mac via NNTP) > was now 2.02. Several people asked me for it, enough that I got tired of > mailing it out. > > Bill Cramer (the author) had sent this off to sumex, but apparently it hasn't > shown up there. I checked with him and decided to make it available on my > own machine. > > So, use anonymous ftp to eclipse.its.rpi.edu > and check directory Mac > for the file TheNews2.02.sit.hqx > > RPI doesn't have any connection at all to this, no guareentees are given nor > implied. I'm just making it available so people can check this out without > everyone mailing it to everyone else. RPI doesn't endorse the program in any > way either. RPI probably doesn't know about the program exists. It's up to > you to decide if you want to use it. For those of you who can't find eclipse, the IP address is 128.113.24.91 (and to kgustilo@pennsy.jhu.edu in particular, not only can you not find my internet host, but mail from my machine can't make it's way back to you. I can't reply to you. I suspect something is setup wrong at your end... To answer your question, I don't intend to post these to comp.binaries.mac, maybe someone else will) - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) (06/05/91)
In article <fkth++m@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: >Bill Cramer (the author) had sent this off to sumex, but apparently it hasn't >shown up there. I checked with him and decided to make it available on my own >machine. I just checked their queue, and it is there, but it's a bit down the line. They're running about 3 weeks behind by the looks of the quque. Thanks for making this available, and thanks to Bill for writing it! I'm hoping that if the bug in adding/deleting groups is fixed that I can get our administration to site license this package. Bruce Carter Internet: bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu Courseware Development Coordinator duscarte@idbsu.idbsu.edu Boise State University Bitnet/CREN: duscarte@idbsu
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.150334.29427@guinness.idbsu.edu>, bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) writes: |> Thanks for making this available, and thanks to Bill for writing it! I'm |> hoping that if the bug in adding/deleting groups is fixed that I can get our |> administration to site license this package. I checked it out, and am not impressed. Opening a session is very slow if you have a lot of groups on your server, and crashed horribly when trying to convert my unix .newsrc file (which is an advertized feature in the manual). Also, setup/preferences info appears to be stored in the application. Among other things, this results in breaking the application if it crashes. Perhaps some of this is because of System 7, but I had similar problems with an earlier version running on 6.0.7. Summary - not a bad idea, but needs work before I'll scrap XRN for it. -- Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.223914.28149@neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes: > In article <1991Jun5.150334.29427@guinness.idbsu.edu>, bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) writes: > |> Thanks for making this available, and thanks to Bill for writing it! I'm > |> hoping that if the bug in adding/deleting groups is fixed that I can get > |> our administration to site license this package. > > I checked it out, and am not impressed. Opening a session is very > slow if you have a lot of groups on your server, and crashed horribly > when trying to convert my unix .newsrc file (which is an advertized > feature in the manual). Also, setup/preferences info appears to > be stored in the application. Among other things, this results in > breaking the application if it crashes. > > Perhaps some of this is because of System 7, but I had > similar problems with an earlier version running on 6.0.7. Hmmm, our NNTP server carries something like 1200 newsgroups, and I haven't had version 2.02 crash yet. I did have problems with the previous version (both under system 7 and system 6), but the newer version seems much more stable. Maybe I'm not using it as much as I used to (that is certainly possible). - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.223914.28149@neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes: >In article <1991Jun5.150334.29427@guinness.idbsu.edu>, bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) writes: >|> Thanks for making this available, and thanks to Bill for writing it! I'm >|> hoping that if the bug in adding/deleting groups is fixed that I can get our >|> administration to site license this package. >I checked it out, and am not impressed. Opening a session is very >slow if you have a lot of groups on your server, and crashed horribly >when trying to convert my unix .newsrc file (which is an advertized >feature in the manual). Also, setup/preferences info appears to >be stored in the application. Among other things, this results in >breaking the application if it crashes. I have just installed version 2.02 to evaluate and it converted my .newsrc with no problem! I'm using system 7 on a IIci 5/80 and it works faultlessly so far. One thing I would like to see is a little dialog box, where you could easily set up a .signature to be automatically included in postings. Cheers Al A.K.Burton@massey.ac.nz Macintosh Consultant Massey University New Zealand
jenner@post.ntu.edu.au (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun5.150334.29427@guinness.idbsu.edu> bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) writes: >In article <fkth++m@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) >writes: >>Bill Cramer (the author) had sent this off to sumex, but apparently it hasn't > >>shown up there. I checked with him and decided to make it available on my own > >>machine. > >I just checked their queue, and it is there, but it's a bit down the line. >They're running about 3 weeks behind by the looks of the quque. > >Thanks for making this available, and thanks to Bill for writing it! I'm >hoping that if the bug in adding/deleting groups is fixed that I can get our >administration to site license this package. > >Bruce Carter On the subject of bugs, I am wondering if anyone hase experienced the following: On my IIcx, "TheNews" will not open from a saved doc yet it will on an SE20. On the SE20, the preferences window is too large for the screen. The "flurry" of messages does not appear during connection. Although this may save time, it is disconcerting to stare at a blank dialog box while waiting. On the plus side, you can now open >32k messages which is useful when looking at binaries and the mentioned crash has gone. I have reverted back to v1.0x hoping that Bill will come up with a fix for the above. It is a great product and my boss will definitely approve a site license. Cheers, Bob Jenner.
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun6.104606.1013@darwin.ntu.edu.au>, jenner@post.ntu.edu.au writes: |> I have reverted back to v1.0x hoping that Bill will come up with a fix for the |> above. It is a great product and my boss will definitely approve a site |> license. I'm glad somebody likes it - this presumably means that the author will continue to support it and make improvements. Aside from the fact that I seem to be the only person who finds it terminally unstable, I hope the author will do something about the performance. If I ask XRN to do a rescan, it takes a couple of seconds. The News takes minutes (effectively) to do the same thing. -- Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun6.041416.21913@neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes: > |jenner@post.ntu.edu.au writes: > |> I have reverted back to v1.0x hoping that Bill will come up with a fix for the > |> above. It is a great product and my boss will definitely approve a site > |> license. > > I'm glad somebody likes it - this presumably means that the author > will continue to support it and make improvements. Aside from the > fact that I seem to be the only person who finds it terminally > unstable, I hope the author will do something about the performance. > > If I ask XRN to do a rescan, it takes a couple of seconds. The News takes > minutes (effectively) to do the same thing. Hmm. Minutes? For what? I just started up TheNews using my news group file and it took 30-35 seconds for it to read the 1000-something line file and come up with the list of unread articles for the 15 newsgroups I actually follow thru it. I then opened a newsgroup that had 298 unread messages, and it took TheNews about 23 seconds to list all the headers for all those unread messages (sorted, no less...). Took about 3 seconds on a newsgroup with only 7 unread articles to list. This is on a Mac IIci, your mileage may of course vary... Are you running system 6 or system 7? I found TheNews to be the only Mac program I have which stumbled across the problem that the famed MMINIT addressed. When running under system 6 I did need the MMINIT or TheNews would drive me nuts on large groups. Those memory manager changes are included in system 7 (DON'T use the init with system 7!), so if you're running system 7 then you would not be effected by the memory manager performance glitch. If you're running system 6 without the MMINIT, then TheNews might seem awfully slow. - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu (Bruce Carter) (06/06/91)
In article <1991Jun6.010650.7956@massey.ac.nz> news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) writes: >One thing I would like to see is a little dialog box, where you could easily >set up a .signature to be automatically included in postings. Although you have to set it up manually with a text editor, if you create a file called "TheNews Signature" in the system folder it will automatically be included (as below). A nice feature here is that it is inserted before you edit the content of the note, which allows you to delete it from responses to groups which frown on signatures. Regarding speed and conversion problems, I had no problems at all here. It is faster than the bogged down Unix box from which I used to read netnews. <-> Bruce Carter, Courseware Development Coordinator bcarter@claven.idbsu.edu Boise State University, Boise, ID 83725 duscarte@idbsu.bitnet (This message contains personal opinions only) (208)385-1250@phone
philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) (06/07/91)
In article <3svha0-@rpi.edu>, gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: |> Hmm. Minutes? For what? I just started up TheNews using my news group file |> and it took 30-35 seconds for it to read the 1000-something line file and come |> up with the list of unread articles for the 15 newsgroups I actually follow |> thru it. I then opened a newsgroup that had 298 unread messages, and it took |> TheNews about 23 seconds to list all the headers for all those unread messages |> (sorted, no less...). Took about 3 seconds on a newsgroup with only 7 unread |> articles to list. This is on a Mac IIci, your mileage may of course vary... I tried to repeat your tests using XRN and The News. It took XRN 9s to launch and list the groups with uread articles. I then opened a group with 489 unread articles. This took 7s. I then tried to do the same with The News. I didn't count program launch time, just the time to open the news file. This took 37s (using about 15 out of over 1400 groups on the server). Maybe not minutes, but significantly slower. I then tried to open the group with 489 unread articles. I was offered the option of only getting 200 because this might be slow. I decided to go for all 489. After about a minute, The News lost contact with the server (one of its less robust features - XRN will keep retrying until it makes contact again). I had to quit and relaunch to get in touch with the server again. I tried again, but this time asking for only 200 articles. This seemed to work, but I didn't note the time. I tried the whole group again and had an unrecoverable system error. After reboot, The News was damaged and wouldn't launch again. I assume this is at least in part because the program modifies its own resources to save settings. Surely this is not recommended practice. |> Are you running system 6 or system 7? I found TheNews to be the only Mac |> program I have which stumbled across the problem that the famed MMINIT |> addressed. I'm running 7.0 on a cx (which as far as I know didn't need the MMINIT fix). Bottom line: The News may work for you. If so, keep feeding suggestions for improvements to the author, and post to the net whenever major improvements appear. Right now, I can live with MacX and XRN, though I would prefer a Mac application for a number of reasons. Just in case anyone gets the wrong impression: I do like to encourage shareware, and am even tolerant of bugs, as long as the software is a good alternative to other options. For example, I do all my downloading with XferIt 1.4, which appears to overlap de-binhexing with downloading - very fast compared with everything else I've tried. -- Philip Machanick philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) (06/07/91)
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: >............When running under system 6 I did need the MMINIT ...... What is the mminit? I cannot find it at Sumex-Aim. What exactly does it do? Thanks -- = Enjoy! = = John DeRosa, Motorola, Inc, Cellular Infrastructure Group = = e-mail: motcid!derosaj@uunet.uu.net, n1111@applelink.apple.com = =I do not hold by employer responsible for any information in this message =
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (06/08/91)
In article <6561@crystal9.UUCP> derosa@motcid.UUCP (John DeRosa) writes: > gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: > > >............When running under system 6 I did need the MMINIT ...... > > What is the mminit? I cannot find it at Sumex-Aim. What exactly > does it do? Thanks The general purpose answer to this question is "Nevermind". The init attempted to fix a minor performance problem in the ROMs of some Macs. Those problems are fixed much better and without some unpleasent side effects in system 7. The problem only slowed down a few programs (from my vague memory, I only heard of three programs, one of which was TheNews, and the other two I don't remember). To track down the (never officially released) init at this point, install it on a system 6 machine, and sort out any incompatibilities caused by the init (and some are caused) is not worth the effort. You'll waste more time than you'd gain by speeding up TheNews (since you'll probably be moving to system 7 soon anyway, and that does a better job of fixing things up). - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
is_s440@ux.kingston.ac.uk (06/10/91)
I am running News2 on an SE30 with system7. When I open a news group and it asks for '200' or 'all'? I selected 200 and got nothing.The same thing on a ci with system6 crashed the machine. It seems the best thing to do is select all (after increasing the apps memory). This is a general problem when you have not read the news for a while and there should be some way round it. Its a pity one cant edit the newsgroups file and mark older letters as all read - you can with rn. simon lucas
rhaller@phloem.uoregon.edu (06/15/91)
In article <1991Jun10.113850.4189@kingston.ac.uk> is_s440@ux.kingston.ac.uk writes: >I am running News2 on an SE30 with system7. > >When I open a news group and it asks for '200' or 'all'? I selected 200 >and got nothing.The same thing on a ci with system6 crashed the machine. > >It seems the best thing to do is select all (after increasing the apps memory). > > >This is a general problem when you have not read the news for a while and there >should be some way round it. Its a pity one cant edit the newsgroups >file and mark older letters as all read - you can with rn. > >simon lucas > This is one of the things I hate about 2.0.2. 1.4 at least knew how many items were actually available for reading. 2.0.2 seems to think anything that has ever been posted is still available. One of the side effects is, as simon points out, is an empty window if you select the 200 option and the first 200 it thinks are available, aren't. What is worse, when you quit out of the empty window, it doesn't even decrement the available or unread counts, so you get the same thing the next time. Likewise, if you select the all option, it fails to properly update the actual counts correctly, even if you read a couple of the items. The only way to get it to believe you've seen all those phantom items is to use 'catch up'. It is also slower than 1.4 in closing the windows, specially when it thinks there are a lot of available, unread items. The first couple of times this happened, I thought my mac had locked up or there was a network 'event'. By the way, I am using a IIci and a Nuvotech ethernet card. On the plus side, 1.4 would occasionally hang my mac and that hasn't happened with 2.0.2 yet. I agree with simon that some way to edit a newsgroups file would be nice. Or at least an option to specify the number of most recent items to show.
cnolan@mee.tcd.ie (06/20/91)
I have a question about TheNews202. Is it possible to read news if
one just has read-only permissions on the nntp-server. I can't get
it to work unless I give read-write permissions. Management here
don't want to let unattended PCs or Macs to post.
Ideas anyone.
===============================================================================
Conor Nolan Phone: 772941 (X1741)
Snr. Technician Fax: 772442
Microelectronics Dept.
Trinity College
Dublin 2 cnolan@mee.tcd.ie
IRELAND ampere::cnolan
===============================================================================tjfs@tadtec.uucp (Tim Steele) (06/21/91)
Any way I can get The News 2.02 here in the UK? We're not on Internet. Regards Tim -- Tim Steele Product Support Manager Tadpole Technology plc