Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!lwall
From: l...@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: net.general,net.news
Subject: HARK! The rn kit has been posted.
Message-ID: <1340@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Sep-84 20:22:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.1340
Posted: Mon Sep 24 20:22:49 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Sep-84 03:36:03 EDT
Reply-To: l...@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Followup-To: net.followup
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 53
The distribution kit for rn, version 4.1 (no relation), has been posted to
net.sources. Rn is a new news reading interface that some people seem to
think they like. It has many of the features that people have been
hankering for in readnews (see hype below). Give it a try--you might
like it too.
If nothing else, you'll want to run the Configure shell script just for
the fun of it. I'm hoping it will set some kind of standard for friendly
software distribution.
The kit comes in eight parts of about 63000 bytes each (except the last).
I hope that's small enough to avoid any truncation problems, but you know
how it goes.
There is also a set of programs to do kit packing (the old knapsack problem)
thrown in.
Here's the hype on rn:
* Fast. Sneaks around and does things while you are reading or thinking.
* Human engineered: subjects are underlined, various highlighting is used,
default action is always bound to space bar. Runs in cbreak mode.
* Built-in pager similar to more, but will back up pages too.
* Newsgroups are read in order of the .newsrc, by default. You can make
your login print the 5 most interesting newsgroups with news. You can
reorder your .newsrc from within rn.
* Thoroughly documented. Every kind of prompt has its own help message.
* Exceedingly customizable, including baudrate dependencies. Interfaces
easily to almost any mailer or newsposter that does its own editing.
* Terse and verbose modes. Optional type-ahead suppression for keyboards
with auto-repeat.
* Subject thread following and killing.
* Subject listing.
* Permanent killing (or other commands) by pattern.
* Extensive searching facilities, both among and within articles.
* Multiple commands can applied to articles matching a pattern, or in a range.
* Will run with full features on PDP11 with split I and D.
* Will run on BSD, System V or V7 systems. (Some lookahead functions are
suppressed on V7 systems without non-blocking read.)
* Reliable and safe, backs up .newsrc and checkpoints it periodically.
* Switch values are modifiable from inside rn.
* Many internal values may be substituted into commands.
* Efficient duplicate article suppression that shows the article to you
in the first newsgroup that you look at, rather than the first newsgroup
on the Newsgroups line that you subscribe to. (Requires inews patch.)
* 2.10.2 compatible.
Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall
P.S. to my beta testers, and anyone else who talks to us directly. If all
the kits don't come through on the first try, you can snarf them out of our
/usr/spool/uucppublic directory under the name rn.kit?, where ? is 1 through 8.
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