INTRODUCTION TO NN ------------------ RELEASE 6.4 nn is a menu based (point and shoot) netnews reader with a complete set of features to satisfy both the expert and the novice user. Since its first release in Denmark in 1984 (!), in Europe in 1988, and the global release in June 1989, it has replaced rn and other well-known news readers at many sites. Some of the key features of nn are: * Menu-based article selection prior to reading the articles with the articles sorted according to subject & posting time! This significantly reduces the time spent on news reading. No keystorkes are wasted on articles you don't want to read, and only the articles selected on the menu will be read. * Release 6.4 uses standard .newsrc, and can leave individual articles unread! * Digests are automatically split and presented as ordinary articles! You can transparently save and respond to individual subarticles. * Full folder support: read, save, and delete individual articles. * Online help and manual. * Built-in unshar and patch functions. * Built-in uudecode function which will automatically unpack, concatenate, and decode multi-part postings. * Easy remapping of keys with advanced macro definition features. * Automatic kill & selection of articles based on subject or author. * User specified presentation sequence of news groups based on the news group hierarchy. * Whole classes of news groups can easily be unsubscribed permanently, e.g. talk.all and all.politics * Related groups can be merged and presented as a single group, e.g. comp.emancs and all gnu.emacs groups. * Blindingly fast 'search for subject'. On my Texas S1500 system, nn uses less than 20 seconds to find all articles on a specific subject among 64000 articles in all groups! * News collection and presentation is extremely fast, because nn uses its own database on top of the standard news system. * In a distributed environment, the database can be shared among all hosts on the network. Only one daemon is needed on the news server for all hosts. This works in a heterogenous environment as well. * NNTP is also supported (using a local database for speed). Because of the database, nn starts almost equally fast (in a few seconds), no matter whether you have 100 or 10000 unread articles! The database takes up some disk space, but dramatically improves speed and functionality. The amount of disk space consumed is approx. 1Mb per 10000 articles. DISTRIBUTION ------------ The package is posted as 22 separate shar archives on comp.sources.unix. It is unpacked by applying /bin/sh to each archive in turn. Everything is a little more than 1 Mbyte, including documentation. It is also available via anonymous ftp from host: dkuug.dk (129.142.96.41) File: /pub/nn6.4.tar.Z (compressed tar) COPYRIGHT --------- Copyright (c) 1989, 1990 by Kim Fabricius Storm. All rights reserved. Not derived from licensed software except as stated below. Permission is granted to anyone to use, modify, and reuse this software for any purpose on any computer system, and to redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: 1. The author is not responsible for the consequences of use of this software, no matter how awful, even if they arise from defects in it. 2. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented, either by explicit claim or by omission. 3. Altered versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. The following code modules have been incorporated into nn, and the above copyright notice does not apply to these modules; they include their own copyright notices (or have none): regexp.c: Copyright (c) 1986 by University of Toronto. Written by Henry Spencer. unshar.c: No copyright notice. Written by K. Greer, S. Shafer, and M. Mauldin decode.c: Derived from a modified Berkeley original posted on USENET. fullname.c: Copyright (c) 1986 by Rick Adams. Derived from the Bnews distribution. contrib/*: Various copyright notices. The software available in the contrib/ directory was sent to me for inclusion in the nn distribution, because the authors think it might be useful to other nn users. I have included it *as is*. inews/*: NNTP 1.5 mini-inews. Copyrights for NNTP applies. The software in the inews/ directory is a stand-alone version of the NNTP 1.5.7 mini-inews which has been slightly changed to ease configuration when used with nn. Various pieces of code which may have their own copyright notices are included in the contrib/ and inews/ directories. This software has been sent to me in the hope that it will be useful to somebody else. I have included it in this spirit, but I take no responsibilities for this software, and I have no intentions to support it. INSTALLATION ------------ The following files are contained in the `doc' subdirectory: The installation procedure is described in the file INSTALLATION. You may also find useful information in the files PROBLEMS and NNTP. The file NEWS-6.3 describes the major changes from release 6.1 to 6.3. The file NEWS-6.4 describes the major changes from release 6.3 to 6.4. BUG REPORTS and SUGGESTIONS --------------------------- Please send bug reports (and fixes) to the following address: nn-bugs@dkuug.dk You may also use nn-bugs for suggestions for improvements (missing features in nn are considered to be bugs :-) The easiest way to send a bug report is by using the :bug command in nn. NN HAS ITS OWN NEWS GROUP ------------------------- We have an unmoderated news group dedicated to nn: news.software.nn The news.software.nn group is used for discussion on all subjects related to the nn news reader. This includes, but is not limited to, questions, answers, ideas, hints, information from the development group, patches, etc. The news.software.nn group was created in January 1990 after an official vote. It may still be missing on parts of the net, so if you don't get it please check your news feed, and help propagating the news group to the entire net. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ---------------- Since the development of nn is now on its fifth year, numerous persons have contributed to nn with ideas and critisism, have helped me debug the software by patiently using alpha and beta versions, have provided bug fixes, small and big chunks of code, new configuration files, etc. My warm thanks go to Rene Seindal and Wayne Davison for their many contributions, to Lloyd W. Taylor for his efforts counting the votes for news.software.nn, and to Paul D. Anderson for running the release 6.3 patch server. I also thank the following persons for their help and contributions: Peter Andersen, Jonathan Bayer, Gardner Cohen, Bernie Cosell, P{r Emanuelsson, Steven Grady, Miek Grenier, Scott Hankin, Kareth, Mike Khaw, Edwin Kremer, Jean-Francois Lamy, Mark Moraes, A. E. Mossberg, Mark Nagel, Rich Salz, Steve Simmons, Wietse Z. Venema, James A. Woods, and Pim Zandbergen. And of course I would like to thank the hundreds of other people who have reported bugs, given suggestions, provided information, etc. Forgive me for not listing all your names here, but I hope you understand, and that you will continue to contribute your valuable input to the continued developments. Let us keep nn in the lead! Kim Fabricius Storm Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark Email: storm@texas.dk Snail: Marielundvej 46E, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark tel: +45 42 91 7400 fax: +45 42 91 8400