ARN v1.03a AVAILABLE FOR FTP


TITLE

        Arn

VERSION

        V1.03a

AUTHOR

        Roland Bless
        rob@spirits.ka.sub.org
        Fax: +49 211 623818

DESCRIPTION

        Arn is a newsreader for USENET/UUCP messages to use with
        Amiga UUCP installations (CNews and derivates or AmigaUUCP D).

        Arn is a fast newsreader which allows you to select groups and
        articles individually. It uses small databases (~2% of newsvolume)
        for providing fast overviews over articles. It's simliar to the
        well known UN*X 'tin' and 'nn'-newsreader, but its no ported
        software.

        It offers much functionality to the user and is well configurable
        (runs with nearly all UUCP-installations). Especially when you have
        a lot of newsgroups and articles Arn is a good choice, because other
        newsreaders hold all their information in memory, but Arn tries to
        use as little as possible.
        Arn has a new scheme for managing newsgroups, which makes
        subscription and unsubscription easy (no annoying questions
        about subscription at beginning of a session).

        Arn is completely controlable via the keyboard. Intuition/mouse
        support is planned for further versions, but it has the advantage
        of working via serial ports.

        Features:

        * table overview over newsgroups and articles

        * selection of groups and articles of interest

        * five different article-overview display-modi
          - subject-threads in alphabetical order (within a thread 
            chronologically)
          - subject-threads in chronological order (within a thread 
            chronologically)
          - no threads, article sorted by date
          - compacted versions of the first two, which hide follow-ups

        * auto-selection and global/local kill-files

        * fast overview presentation of all articles by use of small
          databases

        * doesn't require much memory and is fast even with really many and
          large groups

        * configurable display of article-headers

        * built-in pager, recognizing extra long lines

        * full usage of screen sizes

        * multi-user support

        * works over the serial line (using termcap), too

        * rudimentary MIME support

NEW FEATURES

        Since the V1.03 there were some bugfixes:

        - fixed bug in time.c which produced empty Date:
        - fixed error msg when active-file was 0 bytes
        - fixed LF in moderators-mailaddress
        - fixed bug when pressing CTRL-C
        - no longer private Public-Screen (sorry for forgetting this)
        - fixed deallocation of memory in getconfig.c (some bytes were lost)
        + new option -s waits for a keypress after initialization
        + does 5 retries if it couldn't open database because it was in use
        - compiled under SAS/C 6.3
        - fixed bugs in ArnMaster which caused enforcer hits.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS

        Arn should work on any Amiga model with OS2.04 or higher.

        Naturally, UUCP software is required for getting news.
        This can be CNews, wCNews or AmigaUUCP 1.16D for example.
        CNews/wCNews have an advantage over AmigaUUCP by providing an
        "active"-file, which lets ArnMaster build its databases
        faster (no scanning for new articles needed).

HOST NAME

        Arn and source(!) is available via anonymous ftp from:

        aminet:
        ftp.wustl.edu (130.60.80.80) and its mirrors.
        iraun1.ira.uka.de (129.13.10.90)

DIRECTORY

        aminet:

        pub/aminet/comm/news/
        (maybe still in pub/amiga/new/)

        iraun1.ira.uka.de:

        pub/incoming/  (may need some time to move to)
        pub/systems/amiga/

FILENAMES

        On all sites they should be:

        Arn103a.lha            - binaries and docs
        Arn103a_src.lha        - Source for SAS/C 6.3

PRICE

        Free.

DISTRIBUTABILITY

        Arn is copyrighted software! Arn is (c)opyrighted by Roland Bless.
        You can distribute it unchanged for free (charging no more than the
        usual copying fee). It is allowed to upload it on commercial dialup
        services like BIX, Compuserve etc.
        Because UN*X newsreaders are free, too, Arn is no explicit sharware,
        but you if you really enjoy it, you _should_ send a contribution.
        It is forbidden to distribute a changed source!


P.S.: I'm currently in vacation (preparing for exams).
      Until 15.Oct.93. I'm not at my site and all mail is queued.
      If you have something urgent (no bug reports, because I cant fix bugs
      without my Amiga) send mail to: bless@rpkhp2.mach.uni-karlsruhe.de