cpc@czaeap.UUCP (Chris Cebelenski) (02/27/91)
This is an informal discourse on Amiga UUCP news-readers that I have used
up to this point. It might aid you in selecting a competant news reader
for your own system.
DNEWS - Dillons News reader program.
Dnews is an interactive, random-access news reader. It allows
a quick-glance overview of all unread news items, and coupled with
trimnews, allows a decent news-expire system. No direct support is
included for multiple users, but it can be faked with environment
variables. This news reader has a few quirks that bother a few people,
most notably are the constant switch between mouse and keyboard, and
the long start-up time. Also, there are no provisions for adding new
newsgroups at a later time except through editing the .dnewsrc file
manually. (I have solved this problem, but it requires AREXX to make
it run properly.)
DNEWS PROS:
. Good following of threads
. excellent control over marked and unread messages
. fast screen updates, decent pager.
. Supports most major 'rn' type commands.
DNEWS CONS:
. requires a lot of memory for large # of newsgroups
. slow startup time
. screen formatting is lousy, narrow screen (~ 77 chars)
. Constant mouse/keyboard switching
. Some bugs left.
ARN - Amiga Reads News
ARN provides a nice but fustrating interface to the user. Again,
not much support for multiple news-readers, but the program
is fairly flexible in it's setup. ARN tries to be all things
to all people, and fails in a few major ways, most notably it's
problem with marking items as read, and following threads.
Items can only be marked as 'read' en-masse (ie, the whole newsgroup)
or only if they are actually read all-the-way-through, ie: no
going on from the middle of a message to the next if you don't want
to see it again later. I find this rather annoying.
ARN PROS:
. good screen formatting, intelligent pager
. fairly fast scanning of messages
. low memory usage
. most 'rn' commands supported
ARN CONS:
. rather annoying keyboard commands
. problems with marking messages
. problems with following threads, especially
single page messages.
. too many 'informational' messages on screen
KNEWS - Keith News (Adapted from ANEWS)
KNEWS is basically ANEWS, with a few improvements and bug-fixes.
ANEWS is obsolete, therefore KNEWS's days are probably numbered
also. Most notably it provides a post-by-mail feature, and some
random newsgroup jumping commands.
KNEWS PROS:
. Works with post-by-mail servers
. Small memory usage
. Provides basic 'rn' capabilities
. good for limited disk-space systems
KNEWS CONS:
. Slow scanning
. Deletes ALL read messages, not suitable
for a mail-expire system or multi-readers
. very rudimentary pager. (Looking into fixing
this now.)
ANEWS - OBSOLETE, do not use.
If anyone has any OTHER news-readers, could they please forward them
to myself? Thanks and happy networking!
==========================================================================
Chris Cebelenski UUCP: portal.com!gdc!aminet!czaeap!cpc
The Red Mage : cpc@czaeap.UUCP
// "Amiga - The way REAL people compute"
\X/
Sex, and Drugs, and Rock and Roll-Playing! (DEVO RULES)
==========================================================================
NOTE: Due to brain dead mailers, this message can *NOT* be REPLIED to, to
reach me you MUST send a NEW message. Sorry!cpc@czaeap.UUCP (Chris Cebelenski) (02/27/91)
In article <18be4676.ARN0e30@czaeap.UUCP>, I write: > This is an informal discourse on Amiga UUCP news-readers that I have used > up to this point. It might aid you in selecting a competant news reader > for your own system. > [...] > > ARN CONS: > . rather annoying keyboard commands > . problems with marking messages Actually, it turns out that 'j', "junk article" is what does this... Now if we only had a killfile... > . problems with following threads, especially > single page messages. > . too many 'informational' messages on screen > [...] ========================================================================== Chris Cebelenski UUCP: portal.com!gdc!aminet!czaeap!cpc The Red Mage : cpc@czaeap.UUCP // "Amiga - The way REAL people compute" \X/ Sex, and Drugs, and Rock and Roll-Playing! (DEVO RULES) ========================================================================== NOTE: Due to brain dead mailers, this message can *NOT* be REPLIED to, to reach me you MUST send a NEW message. Sorry!