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1993-04-26
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TRN for OS/2 is based the Unix-Version 2.2. Is was
ported using the EMX 0.8f (GCC) 32-bit-C-Compiler.
The program requires at least OS/2 2.0, it will not run
together with the EMX-extender for DOS (although this
was not explicitely tested). It was designed to run
together with the UUPC-Package by Drew Derbyshire.
Because UUPC does not have real News-Support until version 1.11q,
we included an Rnews-program from a later version of
UUPC (version x). If you have another package that produces
Unix-compatible News-Database, it may run together with TRN.
If you have UUPC 1.11v (or later) installed, you have to
replace the orignial rnews.exe and expire.exe with the ones
in this package. If you have a later UUPC-version than
1.11x, the programs out of that package may work for TRN,
so please check this in the documentation of UUPC.
It is important, that the rnews.exe and expire.exe porgrams of
that version use long HPFS names, and do not convert long directory
names to the 8.3 convention. There is also a problem with the
active file, the programs out of the UUPC package write this
file to the config-directory and not to the news directory, so
that TRN would not be able to find it.
**REMARK**: You need a hpfs-partition, where the news
will be stored, where your personal file will
be located (your home-directory) and where temporary
files can be created (the uupc-temp-directory).
The reason are the long filenames, that are
hardcoded in the TRN-Source. Also TRN will use
a completely unix-compatible filestructure to
store the news. So there will be directory-names
like 'c:/usr/uupc/news/alt/cyberpunk' or even longer
ones. If there is enough desire for a FAT-version,
we will perhaps do that later.
This package includes:
TRN -- the newsreader
MThreads -- it generates the thread-database
TmpThread -- this program is called by TRN for temporary thread files
ActTimes -- this program generates and updates the active.times file
Rnews -- this replaces original Rnews of UUPC
Expire -- removes old news articles
compress -- decompresses newsbatches, called from within rnews
unshar -- utility to extract shar'ed files out of news articles
Installation:
- Put the executables into a directory listed in your path.
The full name of the directory (including drive) must be
listed in the TRN-rc-file. The best thing seams to be
your UUPC-binaries-directory. The rnews.exe of UUPC may
be replaced by the one provided in this package, if you
have already installed an expire-program, you may also
replace it with the one in this package (see notes above).
- Put the emx*.dll files into a directory listed in your LIBPATH.
If you already have emx*.dll-Files, check if yours are newer
that the ones included in this package. If your's are newer, don't
replace then, TRN should work with them. At least emx 0.8f is needed.
- The directory, where the TRN-executables are located and
the one, where the UUPC-execs can be found MUST be in
to PATH-variable, so that they can be found by TRN.
Also the external editor MUST be in everybodies path.
- Edit your config.sys and add the following setting:
UUPCTRNRC
The setting must include the whole path to the file, like
UUPCSYSRC or UUPCUSRRC (e.g.: SET UUPCTRNRC=C:/USR/UUPC/CONFIG/TRN.RC)
You may use either "/" or "\" in this path.
- Look through your UUPC-rc-files, and check if the information
is complete and correct. The following settings are required
(they are NOT optional):
UUPCSYSRC:
MailServ, NodeName, NewsDir, Domain, TempDir, MailDir
UUPCUSRRC:
Mailbox, Signature, Name, Home, Organization, Editor
UUPCTRNRC:
Newsadmin, TrnLib, LocalDist, OrganizationDist, CityDist,
StateDist, Countrydist, ContinentDist
Don't forget, these settings are required, not optional!
Path-names in this settings may either use '/' or '\' as
directory separators. This didn't work in the previous version
of the OS/2 port (version 1.0) but this is (hopefully) fixed now.
UUPCTRNRC: The variable Newsadmin ist the name of the mailbox
of the person which does sysadmin on the machine,
this may be the same as the variable Mailbox in the
UUPCUSRRC-file.
TrnLib is the directory, where the executables
are located (TRN looks for the file newsnews there
and also stores some configuration files there).
The other 6 settings are the values for the
distributions you want to use for postings.
If you use the environment-variable HOME, it will overwrite
the setting Home in the UUPCUSRRC.
- copy the file TERMCAP.DAT to one of your directories
for example the config-directory of UUPC.
- set another environmentvariable: TERMCAP. This is the value
for the terminal-definition-file you want to use. The setting
must include the whole path to the TERMCAT.DAT-file
(SET TERMCAP=C:/USR/UUPC/CONFIG/TERMCAP.DAT).
You may use either "/" or "\" in this path.
- Now with your TERMCAP.DAT installed, you must set the
TERM-variable. (e.g. SET TERM=ansi or SET TERM=window).
IMPORTANT:
~~~~~~~~~~
- Now you have to generate an active file in the news directory.
I'm sorry, but rnews does not write the names of new newsgroups
automatically to the active file, you have maintain that yourself.
For the layout of the active file please look for the sample "active"
that is included in this package.
Now you can get some news-batches with UUPC. If your settings
are correct, and you're using the rnews provided with TRN,
the news will be delivered to the directory listed in the
NewsDir-Variable in your UUPCSYSRC. Rnews will also create
and maintain the active-file. Now you must create the active.times
file. This is done simply by typing acttimes to the command line.
The active.times file should be located in the same directory
as the active file.
Now you can either start TRN or first create thread files
for specific newsgroups. This can be done by using
mthreads news.group to thread a specific group, or
mthreads all to thread every group.
For more information on the programs please refer to
the original documentation.
Remarks:
- I compiled the sources of rnews and expire out of the
UUPC 1.1x package. The executables are included in this
package. I tried to contact Drew Derbishire, but he
didn't answer. First I didn't want to include the
programs without asking him, but there's no choice,
because TRN 1.1 for OS/2 has to be released now. So I want
to thank Drew now for his work on the whole UUPC package,
and hope that I can get in contact with him soon.
- I included the program "compress" into the package
which is needed to uncompress news-batches and is
called from within the rnews-program. I received this
program without any documentation, just the exe-file
was included. So I don't know who wrote this program
and I was not able to ask if I'm allowed to include
this program into this package. If you have a compress
which also uses the "-d" switch (decode) you can just
try to use yours, you must not use the one included
in this package.
- TRN can not only save but also extract articles directly
by using the e-command when displaying the article. TRN
will try to determine the type of the file. It will
recognize uuendoded or shiped (zip-archiver) articles and
also SHAR'ed files. TRN will use it's own routines to
uudecode and unship articles. This will also work if
the archive consists of multiple articles (just type 'e /dirname'
on the first part and then only 'e' on the following ones).
If a shell-archive is detected, TRN will call the external
programs 'tail' and 'unshar' to extract the archive.
You must ensure that you have the Unix-Tools 'tail' and
'unshar' installed and in the path. Tail will be used to strip
off the header so that only the article-body is saved. tail is
a unix-tool which was ported by Kai-Uwe Rommel and can be found
in the "gnututil.zoo", the GNU Text Utilities on ftp-os2. Also
the program "unshar" can be found on ftp-os2.
- If you have the environmentvariable "deldir" set, which
can be very useful of course, expire gets VERY slow. This
can be avoided using the batch-file expirenews (or somthing
similar) to temporarily disable the deldir-setting. This
batch file is also included in this package (see expirenews.cmd).
*******************************************************************
Thanks:
Thanks to Eberhard Mattes for his excellent work on
the port of GNU GCC for OS/2. Porting TRN would have been
impossible to do without his GCC, because of lots of
unix-specific functions.
Thanks also to Kai-Uwe Rommel for his betatest and
the resulting improvements. A lot of suggestions
he made will be in the next release.
Thanks also to the others who tested TRN.
********************************************************************
Please send your suggestions, remarks or bug reports to
Herbert Neugebauer haen@veces.stgt.sub.org
or
Thilo Schuster term@godot.stgt.sub.org
********************************************************************
Remarks and ToDos:
- When chasing xrefs on threaded groups, trn compains about
corrupt xref-lines. (Rnews has to be rewritten)
*** done, thanks to Drew Derbishire and Kai-Uwe Rommel ***
- When saving an article in mailbox-format, the generation
of the From-line does not work correctly. Default values
are used for the from-line. The filexp-function seams
not to work correctly.
*** should work now ***
- On some groups (unthreaded ones) trn calls tmpthread
an then displays the thread selector, although you
didn't tell trn to do so. (You can display the thread
selector on unthreaded groups by pressing 't').
If this happens, you can try to edit manually the
active2-file (in the trnlib-directory). Threaded groups
are marked with a small 'y', 'n' or 'm' unthreaded ones
with capital 'Y', 'N' 'M'.
*** This problem never happened for half a year now, although ***
*** nothing has been fixed. So PLEASE send us an email if you ***
*** experience the problem. ***
- currently the commands s S w and W for saving articles
do the same, there is no difference between them.
We don't save via a shell, we do it directly on our own
and this will not be fixed, so there will be no difference
between s and S (btw. w and W) in future.
But the stripping of the header (w and W) will be included
later.
******* partly fixed at 08/15/92, now the stripping of
the header with the w-command is working. But there is still
no difference between s and S and between w and W. *****
- The kill-file does not work at the moment. The reason ist
mainly, that we need working fseek and ftell functions
to read the article header for writing the kill-commands
to the file. But this commands does not work for text files
in emx 0.8d. This will probably be fixed in emx 0.8e.
There is another problem with the kill-files, but this
will only be fixed, if the ftell and fseek functions
work correctly, so don't try create edit killfiles on
your own, because if one is found, TRN will try to read
it, and then it cannot be opened correctly. You will
get an error-message, that the killfile cannot be created
(although it exists).
********* fixed by using binary mode to open articles. 07/28/92 *******
- NNTP-Support is not included, and it is very unlikely, that
this will be done in the future. TRN for OS/2 is intended
to work together with UUPC at the moment. If somebody
would like to do the NNTP support for TRN, I will send
the sources. I can't do that, because I don't have access
to TCP/IP, to check if it would be possible.
- Server-mode for acttimes and mthreads is not supported.
The reason is that we need forks and execs to do this.
Perhaps this will be fixed later, but the programs work
together with UUPC, and so this seams not to be very
important. Also this would require NNTP, see also the note above...
- We had some problems with the OS/2 filesystems. Or better
with the Un*x-filesystem. There are no file links under
OS/2. We avoided them using the DosCopy API-function.
In most cases this may be suitable, but this may cause
problems under certain circumstances.
*** such problems were never experience ... ***
- There was also a Problem when a file was opened two times
simultaneously. This is not possible with the fopen
command in EMX. We fixed this temporarily by copying the
file first and then opening the copied one only for reading.
There is another way by using API-calls and fdopen, so
this may be fixed later.
*** this should work now, because the fopen in EMX now allows ***
*** shared opening of files. Be sure not to have TRN running ***
*** while rnews is executed. This may cause error messages. ***
- You can only post arcticles from within TRN. Under Unix
there is a shell-script Pnews, which can also handle this
without starting TRN. The posting routine is implemented
in C and included into TRN. You can post your articles
now by using the followup-command 'f' (not 'F'). If you
are at article-level, you will be asked if you want to
start an unrelated article. This did also work in the
original Unix-TRN.
- At the moment articles will not be posted locally, so
you cannot read them with TRN on your own machine. But
the articles are saved to an outgoing article-mailbox.
*********** fixed at 08/15/92: local posting should work now *******
- saving via pipe (s|... , w|... , e dir | ...) does not
work currently.
****** fixed at 08/15/92: use another PIPESAVER-string *******