News.nib
News1.nib
News2.nib
Post.nib
THIS IS NOT A TERRIBLY FUNCTIONAL NEWSREADER. IT IS PROVIDED AS A BASIS FOR OTHER PROJECTS YOU MIGHT WANT TO DO. IF YOU JUST WANT A GOOD SOLID NEWSREADER, CHECK OUT "NEWSGRAZER" (BY JASON ADAMS) ON THE FTP SITES. Phew, that said... This code is not public domain. I retain all rights to this code, except that you may use any part(s) of this code in any program which you give away for free. I may be willing to let you use parts of this code (for free) in programs which you sell, but I'd like to be asked first. This code is provided as both example code for certain techniques, and as a possible starting point for a real newsreader/mailreader. It works pretty well right now as a newsreader. It can't post. It requires NNTP. I'd like to see people add: 0) Posting. I have a nib file for what I'd like it to look like, but that's about it. Posting would be really simple, I just haven't done it. 1) Ability to read the /usr/spool/news directories directly, in addition to UUCP. 2) Ability to read mail as well. Basically, news and mail should be treated the same, with the same folders applying to each. 3) Ability to save articles in a group (or move them between groups) or mail messages in a folder. Mail folders and news groups should function identically. If you save a message in either, it should always show up. (Of course, there should be a switch to set whether you actually want to see previously read messages in a group/folder.) 4) Automatic filtering of incoming mail to different mailboxes/groups/folders. Thus reading mail would be just like reading news; you'd have a list of folders with new entries, go into them, read the mail, and decide whether to save it or chuck it. (Use elm-filters on this one, save yourself some trouble.) Note that this newsreader uses the undocumented "ColumnCell" class. You should probably switch this to something else. Also, there's source included for the little clock icon (like you see in Preferences), which I'd like to display the time of posting in (good luck!). Right now the calendar/ subdirectory isn't used at all. Enjoy. BTW, I no longer am working on News, I've got another project, so you're pretty much on your own. (You can still ask me questions, though.) If you come up with some neat changes, send them back to me, and maybe I'll be able to come up with a real release. -william shipley wjs@last.cac.washington.edu
WARNING: Use this program at your own risk. It backs up your .newsrc in .newsrc~ when you run it, but there is still some possibility of losing your .newsrc unless you make a backup somewhere. Note that rn(1) uses .newsrc.bak to back up the .newsrc, so there's always a mildly recent copy around. To run, type News -NewsHost <nntp_machine_name> where <nntp_machine_name> is the internet name or number of a machine which runs NNTP. That's all most people at large sites will have to do. For example, Stanford people type News -NewsHost portia.stanford.edu while UWash people type News -NewsHost milton.u.washington.edu To save yourself typing, do a dwrite News NewsHost <nntp_machine_name> once in a shell. Now you can invoke News from the Workspace manager. If your next is running nntp itself, you needn't set anything. If you have /usr/spool/news mounted from a central server, you're doing things the silly way. To run News, you must either (a) put NNTP up on the server, or (b) put NNTP up on your machine. To get NNTP, ftp it from uunet.uu.net, modify the config.h file and follow the instructions on how to install it properly. If your newsfeed is via UUCP the above discussion applies to you, too. Eventually all this will be made easier. This is a beta version, I've tried to get the functionality and I haven't sweated the compatibility. What I'd like to do is bundle nntp with News and auto-start it if there is a /usr/spool/news directory handy. -william shipley july 23, 1990
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Netfuture.ch.
