DP Tool Club 24/CD_ASCQ_24_0995.iso/vrac/dannws11.zip/README

Text File | 1995-07-02 | 8KB | 184 lines

DanNews - another throbbing Blender Software (BS) production
------------------------------------------------------------

This is DanNews, a UUCP news unbatcher. Unlike RNews it's fast and it only
takes as much memory as you let it.

The bad points are that it can't send articles on to other sites and it can't
handle compressed batch files. That doesn't matter if you get your news feed
through NNTP but it's not so good if you get your news through UUCP.


What you need
-------------

Kickstart 2 or above, a news set up that uses the UUNEWS: way of storing news
articles, and a batch file (natch).


Installing
----------

- Copy DanNews to UUC:. Don't delete RNews because some programs may still
  want to use it. Also don't edit the RNews entry in UULIB:Config to point
  to DanNews because DanNews can't post news, it's just an unbatcher.
- Create the file UULIB:sitename or UUCP:sitename to hold your full site name
  (eg. mine's 'blender.demon.co.uk') needed for the PATH and XREF options. It
  doesn't matter which one you use, but I included both because the Tin
  newsreader also uses this way to work out the site name (earlier versions
  of Tin used UUCP:sitename, later versions use UULIB:sitename).
- Depending on your set up, you may need to alter other scripts which call
  RNews to call to DanNews.


Extra stuff for the AmigaDIS package
------------------------------------

- Edit DIS:Read_News and replace RNews with DanNews. If you want you can also
  put in some of the options (explained further on).
- It's a good idea to wipe the command that deletes the batch file in the
  line afterwards and use the DELETE option (further down) instead.
- It's done. Have a Fruit Corner with dark and milk chocolate covered puffed
  rice (yum).


Extra stuff for the AmiTCP-DIS package
--------------------------------------

- Same as above, but edit AmiTCP:bin/nntptransfer instead. Type 'protect
  nntptransfer srwd' afterwards if your editor messed around with the
  protection bits.
- If you use plink to dial up Demon instead of the normal link than you'll
  have to edit that instead. And protect it afterwards, mind.


Options
-------

- DanNews FILE,CACHE/K/N,DELETE/S,DELETEOVERVIEW/S,PATH/S,STATS/S,XREF/S,
  -1/S,-H/S,-N/S,-T/K
  The single character options are compatible with RNews.

- FILE
  The file to unbatch. If you don't give a file then stdin is used instead.
  This means that other programs can pipe stuff to it. But it's slower.
- CACHE/K/N
  The maximum amount that it can allocate to the cache. If it's positive then
  the cache will not go above that size - it could very well be less. If it's
  negative then the cache will be at most that much less than the largest
  block of memory you have (check with avail). The default is -100000.
- DELETE/S
  Delete the batch file after a successful unbatch but keep it there if there
  was an error. If you run a script from a Workbench icon to unbatch any new
  news and delete the batch file afterwards then it's probably a good idea to
  remove the delete command and set this switch instead. That way you have a
  chance to see what's wrong instead of watching in horror as IconX carefully
  deletes your last news download.
- DELETEOVERVIEW/S
  Found out by accident that Tin 1.3 beta seems a lot faster if you delete
  the .overview files and let it recreate them from scratch after each news
  unbatch. So, I added a new option to do this.
- PATH/S
  Alters the 'Path' header so that your site is put on last in the list. You
  have to have your sitename set up properly for this to work.
- STATS/S
  Display some funky statistics for each group when the unbatch has finished.
- XREF/S
  Switch on cross referencing stuff. This means it makes Xref headers that
  let your newsreader automatically skip reading crossposted articles for the
  second or third or so on groups. You have to have your sitename set up
  properly for this to work.
- -1/S
  For crossposted articles, only unbatch the article to the first group in
  the 'Newsgroups' header (or if that one isn't in UULIB:newsgroups then go
  through the header and find the first one which is and unbatch to that
  group instead).
- -H/S
  For crossposted articles, disable hardlinks. They're useful because the
  second, third, etc... copies of articles in the 'Newsgroups' header are
  really only pointers to the original, not complete copies. That means that
  only a few of bytes of disk space are used instead of a few K. But if you
  don't use a file system that supports hardlinks (ie. not FFS) then you get
  problems instead. But it serves you right for not using FFS...
- -N/S
  Don't bother unbatching the file, but run through the program anyway. Maybe
  useful if you want to test if the batch file's corrupt or to see how big
  the unbatch will be with the STATS option or something.
- -T/K
  If you unbatch from stdin then a tempory work file is made in T:. You can
  change the directory of it by using this though.


Examples
--------

- DanNews TCPIP:Spool/News/batch delete -h
- DanNews TCPIP:Spool/News/batch cache 100000 path xref
- DanNews TCPIP:Spool/News/batch cache -500000 stats -n
- DanNews <PIPE: -t Work:TempDir


Hints 'n' stuff
---------------

The cache must be at least the size of the largest article, otherwise DanNews
stop with an error.

It's picky about download errors. If your news download stops early because
of an error, it's a good idea to rename the corrupt batch file to something
else before restarting the download. That way the corrupt article will be at
the end of the file and you can easily delete it by loading it into an editor
that doesn't expand or compress spaces or tabs. If you forget to do this then
you'll still have an idea of where the corrupt article is because you'll be
told the offset into the file.

The program can unbatch control messages. If a message has a 'Control' header
then it's unbatched to the group control.<name>, for example control.newgroup
or control.rmgroup. But you've also got to put the group names of the control
messages you're bothered about into UULIB:newsgroups (or UULIB:DanNewsGroups)
otherwise they'll get thrown into junk. The full list of control messages are
cancel, ihave, sendme, newgroup, rmgroup, sendsys, version, and checkgroups.

If you want, you can list some more groups in UULIB:DanNewsGroups. It's in
the same format as UULIB:newsgroups. It lets you define groups that you don't
want your newsreader to show (eg. control groups). But remember that TrimNews
doesn't trim the groups listed in UULIB:DanNewsGroups, so you've got to sort
that one out yourself.

The junk group is where articles go when the they're in none of the other
groups listed in UULIB:newsgroups (or UULIB:DanNewsGroups).


Bugs
----

If you hit CTRL-C then you'll interrupt the unbatching before the .next files
have been updated, so if you unbatch again you overwrite all of the articles
that were created during the interrupted unbatch. But then again this isn't
so bad 'cos you don't get duplicate articles if you unbatch the same batch
file again (which you probably will do).

Sometimes (very rarely) it locks up. I think the file system can't cope with
lots of reads and writes in a short time - I did a debug version which was
just the same as the normal version except it printed lots of messages to
show what was happening (so it was slower). Nothing ever went wrong.


And finally...
--------------

This is copyrighted by me but freely distributible. It shouldn't be altered
in any way and you should only charge for disks, postage, or packing if you
charge anything.

If it trashes your news or blows up your computer or destroys the fabric of
the universe or something then consider yourself warned. Use at your own risk
and all that. But I trust it enough to use it.

And it can't be used as part of anything that's sold for profit without my
say so. So there.

My Email address is [e-mail], if you spot a bug or something.

Dan.