391 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
391 lines
21 KiB
Plaintext
From pit-manager.MIT.EDU!daemon Sun Apr 12 18:36:23 1992 remote from piraya
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Received: by piraya.bad.se (1.64/waf)
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via UUCP; Wed, 15 Apr 92 21:16:43 GMT
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for bozze
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Received: from PIT-MANAGER.MIT.EDU by mail.swip.net (5.61+IDA/KTH/LTH/1.2)
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id AAmail14779; Sun, 12 Apr 92 18:36:23 +0200
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Received: by pit-manager.MIT.EDU (5.61/2.1JIK)
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id <AA06358@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>; Sun, 12 Apr 92 12:36:05 -0400
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Date: Sun, 12 Apr 92 12:36:05 -0400
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From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
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Message-Id: <9204121636.AA06358@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
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Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet/news.admin/USENET_Software:_History_and_Sources
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Reply-To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
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X-Problems-To: postmaster@pit-manager.mit.edu
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Precedence: bulk
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To: bozze@piraya.bad.se (Bo Arnoldson)
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Xref: bloom-picayune.mit.edu news.admin:20441 news.announce.newusers:775 news.software.readers:1319 news.software.b:10805 news.answers:603
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Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sample.eng.ohio-state.edu!purdue!spaf
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From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
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Newsgroups: news.admin,news.announce.newusers,news.software.readers,news.software.b,news.answers
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Subject: USENET Software: History and Sources
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Message-ID: <spaf-software_698911822@cs.purdue.edu>
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Date: 24 Feb 92 06:10:25 GMT
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Expires: 24 Apr 92 18:10:22 GMT
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Followup-To: news.admin
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Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
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Lines: 359
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Approved: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU
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Supersedes: <spaf-software_692072013@cs.purdue.edu>
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Archive-name: usenet-software/part1
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Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford)
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Last-change: 20 Feb 92 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
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Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of
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software packages and programs. This article mentions the important
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ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look
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for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign"
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and "obsolete" software. At the very end is a list of sites from which
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current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained.
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Note that the number of software packages available to run news,
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especially on PCs, is increasing. This article lists only a few of
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the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any
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particular software package should not be construed as indicating
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anything about its suitability usefulness.
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History
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-------
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Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7
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Unix with UUCP. Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,
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Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to
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exchange information with the Unix community. Steve Bellovin, a grad
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student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first
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version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on
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the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the
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network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at
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Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference. Steve
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Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never
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released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did
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another implementation in C for public distribution. Tom Truscott made
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further modifications, and this became the "A" news release.
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In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school
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student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality
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and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was
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intended for only a few articles per group per day. This rewrite was
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the "B" News version. The first public release was version 2.1 in
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1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test. As the net grew, the news
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software was expanded and modified. The last version maintained and
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released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.
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Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
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of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the
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2.10.2 release in 1984. By this time, the increasing volume of news
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was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was
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added to the software at 2.10.2. Moderated groups were inspired by
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ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems.
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In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number
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of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced
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batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and
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other features.
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The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19. Article format
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is specified in RFC 1036 (see below). B News has been declared "dead"
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by a number of people, and is unlikely to be upgraded further; most
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new sites are using C News (see next paragraph).
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A new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the
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University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer. This
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version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article
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processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve
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the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc. The
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package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987. For more
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information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The
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Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings. The current
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version of C News is labeled 27-Aug-1991. C News can be obtained from
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its official archive site, cs.toronto.edu, using FTP.
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ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS
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systems. ANU-NEWS is complete news system that allows reading,
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posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc. in a fashion
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closely related to regular news. The implementation includes the RFC
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1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP
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protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a
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VAX/VMS Decnet object. An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet
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object is also included. The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to
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standard DEC screen oriented systems. The license for the software is
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free, and there are no restrictions on the re-distribution. For more
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info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston). ANU-NEWS is
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available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu. Contact
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SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info.
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A screen-oriented NEWS client for VMS is also available via ftp from
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ftpvms.ira.uka.de (contact Bernd Onasch <ONASCH@iravcl.ira.uka.de> for
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details).
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A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is
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available. The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>,
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and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lonestar.org>. Also,
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Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the
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UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.15D, available for ftp from
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ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon. The package also includes a
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newsreader very loosely like the real rn. Dillon also has a "vn" port
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provided by Eric Lee Green. This software is also available on Bix,
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and for ftp from ab20.larc.nasa.gov.
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Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been
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developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews"
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interface. The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by
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Kenneth Almquist. "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command
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interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning. It
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appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system
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(described below). "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard
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2.11 news source.
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A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall
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(the author of Perl) and released in 1984. This interface also uses
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full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many
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other useful features and is very popular with many regular net
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readers. The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or
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processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the
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ability of the user to develop customized macros for display and
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keyboard interaction. "rn" is currently at release 4.4. It is being
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maintained by Stan Barber of the Baylor College of Medicine. "rn" is
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not provided with the standard news software release, but is very
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widely available because of its popularity. The software can be
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obtained from its official archive site, lib.tmc.edu, using FTP, and
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via mail from archive-server@bcm.tmc.edu
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A variant of "rn" is "trn" by Wayne Davison. Trn adds the ability to
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follow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 2.2
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is based on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the
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user to take advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article
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and its replies. This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the
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articles, complete with a small ascii representation of the current
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article's position in the discussion tree. Trn can be obtained from
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caesar.cs.montana.edu in the /pub/trn directory, from uunet in the
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news subdirectory, and from many other archive servers world-wide.
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xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick
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Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley). The current version is
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6.17. xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject,
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user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes,
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and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings
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similar to rn). xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug
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fixing and feature addition support from many of the users. xrn can
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be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com,
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ftp.uu.net, export.lcs.mit.edu).
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There are two popular macro packages named "GNUS" and "Gnews" that can
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be used with the GNU Emacs text editor. These allow reading,
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replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs
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text editor. Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather
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than from a local disk. Copies can be found on most archive sites
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that carry the GNU archives.
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"nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of
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Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989. nn differs from
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the traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article
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subject and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to
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read. nn is also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of
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article headers on-line. (I.e. it trades space for time. A good rule
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of thumb is that the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool.
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So up to 110% of your news spool is the amount of space news and the
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nn database will take.) The current version of nn is 6.4.16. nn can
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be obtained via anonymous FTP from dkuug.dk, uop.uop.edu,
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mthvax.cs.miami.edu or various other sites; European sites should
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request the sources from their nearest backbone site.
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yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader. It operates with threads,
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has different article organization methods, and is full-screen
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oriented. It has been posted to alt.sources, and further information
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is available from becker@med-in.uni-sb.de (Dieter Becker).
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"notes" is a software package popular at some sites. It uses a
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different internal organization of articles, and a different
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interchange format than that of the standard Usenet software. It was
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inspired by the notesfiles available in the PLATO system and was
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developed independently from the Usenet news. Eventually, the "notes"
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network and Usenet were joined via gateways doing (sometimes
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imperfect) protocol translation. The interface for "notes" is similar
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to "rn" but implements different features, many of which are dictated
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by its internal organization. "notes" was written in 1980-1981 by Ray
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Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then) grad students at the University of
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Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The first public release of "notes" was
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at the January 1982 Usenix conference. The current release of notes
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is version 1.7.
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In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,
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posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
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(as specified in RFC 977). This protocol allows hosts to exchange
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articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional
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uucp. It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified
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version of "rn" or other user agents) from machines which cannot or
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choose not to install the USENET news software. Reading and posting
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are done using TCP/IP messages to a server host which does run the
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USENET software. Sites which have many workstations like the Sun and
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Apollo products find this a convenient way to allow workstation users
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to read news without having to store articles on each system. Many of
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the Usenet hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles
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using NNTP because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp
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(and NNTP ensures much faster propagation).
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NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U.
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C. San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley. It is now in
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release 1.5.11 dated 11 february 1991, with the next planned release
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at 1.6. NNTP includes support for System V UNIX with Excelan Ethernet
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cards and DECNET under Ultrix. NNTP was developed at U. C. Berkeley
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by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven Grady, and Mike
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Meyer, among others. The NNTP package is distributed on the 4.3BSD
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release tape (although that is version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is
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also available from the various authors, many major hosts, and by
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anonymous FTP from lib.tmc.edu, mthvax.cs.miami.edu and ftp.uu.net.
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Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS
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(current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS.
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VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact
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jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives
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vmsnet.source. Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as
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a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server.
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An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews. It
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is implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP. It is
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available from many Mac archives, including apple.com and
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sumex-aim.stanford.edu
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There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines
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(under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu
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[128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly
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<connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty
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<welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>. In addition, another NNTP-based news
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browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8. It provides
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mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with
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support for X11 servers on remote machines. It is available for
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anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory
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pub/lispm/news-reader/. It is written and maintained by Peter
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Clitherow <pc@bellcore.com>
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A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI
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<dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown. An NNTP reader
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suite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available
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for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files. There are two
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MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs"
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directory. They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work. They will
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both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year. Source will
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be provided at that time.
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At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is
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available. It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda
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Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu). Version 2.4 of the
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software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM. PSU NetNews supports only
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3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver. Most major VM
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sites appear to use this package. NetNews supports locally-stored
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news, not NNTP reading.
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There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER
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will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent
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from a Unix NNTPXMIT process. Either program sends the news articles
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to NetNews for processing. Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet
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or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from
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listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST. These programs are provided with
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source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal.
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There are at least two NNTP news-readers for VM. One requires IBM's
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ISPF product. Contact Satish Movva (u37127@uicvm.uic.edu) for
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information. The second uses XEDIT as its screen manager. Contact
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Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for information. Both programs
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require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal.
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An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is
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written by Stephen Bacher <seb1525@mvs.draper.com> at Draper
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Laboratory. It requires C/370 V1R2 (though V1R1 will work) and uses
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TCP/IP sockets. Contact Steve for distribution details.
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Special note on "notes" and pre-2.11 news
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-----------------------------------------
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Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the
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Usenet. In particular, postings may be made by "notes" users to
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moderated groups but they will not usually propagate throughout the
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entire Usenet. The same may happen to users of old B news software.
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Users of "notes" or old B news software wishing to post to moderated
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groups should either mail their submissions to the moderator, as
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listed in the monthly posting of "List of Moderators" in the group
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"news.lists", or else they should post from a system running
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up-to-date B news software (i.e., 2.11). "notes" users may obtain
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some patches from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable recent
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versions of "notes" to interact with moderated groups properly.
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Users of old B news and "notes" are also not able to take advantage of
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some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message.
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"notes" continues to be a "foreign" system, and B news versions before
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2.10.2 are considered "obsolete." The various maintainers of the
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Usenet software have never expressed any commitment to maintain
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backwards compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and
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are unlikely to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to
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maintain compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to
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interact with the Usenet.
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Software versions & availability
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--------------------------------
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You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing the
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"v" command in either "vnews" or "readnews." The "rn" version is
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obtainable by typing the "v" command to the top level prompt.
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Type "V" to see the version number of "nn".
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Current software is obtainable from almost any major Usenet site.
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Source to the 'rn' newsreader program is also widely available.
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The following sites probably have sources to the current news software
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available for anyone needing a copy:
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Site Contact
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---- -------
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munnari kre@munnari.oz.au
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osu-cis postmaster@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
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philabs usenet@philabs.philips.com
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pyramid usenet@pyramid.com
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rutgers usenet@rutgers.edu
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tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com
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watmath usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu
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Sources for news 2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in
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the comp.sources.unix archives. European sites should request the
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sources from their nearest Eunet backbone site.
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Standards
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---------
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News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols,
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some of which are described by RFCs. An RFC is a Request For Comment, a
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de facto standard in the Internet Community. It is a form of published
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software standard, done through the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI.
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Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable from archive sites.
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Current news-related RFCs include the following:
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RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this.
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RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol.
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RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles.
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RFC 1123 amends RFC 822.
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RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use.
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Newsgroups
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----------
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The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can
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be consulted for recent developments.
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gnu.emacs.gnews News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews.
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gnu.emacs.gnus News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English).
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news.software.anu-news VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.
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news.software.b Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
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news.software.nn Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.
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news.software.notes Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois.
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news.software.readers General discussion about news reading software.
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Acknowledgements
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----------------
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The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly
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enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons:
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Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley,
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Bob Page, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall. Thanks, folks.
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--
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Gene Spafford
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Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences
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Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398
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Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825
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