New vnews release posted to mod.sources

Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxb!mhuxn!mhuxm!mhuxj!houxm!ihnp4!hou3c!ka
From: k...@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: New vnews release posted to mod.sources
Message-ID: <1016@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Jan-85 12:29:49 EST
Article-I.D.: hou3c.1016
Posted: Wed Jan 30 12:29:49 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 31-Jan-85 02:32:50 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 36

Since it is not clear when 2.11 will be released, I decided to release
the code as it currently stands to let people benefit from its features.
There are a few things that could be cleaned up. but no known bugs.

This release includes a number of new features, including grouping of
articles by discussion, an index page, and a more efficient  parent
command.  One simple feature that you may not notice when reading the
documentation is that erase and kill processing is now done on the
count.

Vnews has undergone a major internal reorganization designed to make
vnews more maintainable and extensible in the future.  The vnews source
is now independent of the rest of the netnews source, but the generally
useful routines have been broken out into a library so that they can be
reunited.  The localize.sh procedure has been replaced with a config
file.

Included in this release is a program called postnm, which combines the
functions of recmail and inews -h in one program.  Because postnm
performs more error checking than inews -h, sites are encouraged to
install it even if they don't want to run vnews.

Vnews uses a new file (called artfile) to keep information about
articles.  Be warned that this file may be two or three times the size
of the history file.  This file should really be maintained by inews
and expire, but currently there are separate programs to do this.  A
change to inews is still required to allow it to pass the history line
to the afinsert program (which adds new articles to artfile), but this
change is simple and merely involves copying a version of ifuncs.c into
your netnews source directory and recompiling if you have made no local
changes to ifuncs.c.

The file install.doc gives installation instructions.  If you find any
problems, let me know and I will try to fix them.  (Try not to scorch
my mailbox too badly.)  I also welcome general comments and suggestions.
					Kenneth Almquist