From: scotty@gagetalker.com (Scott Turner)
Subject: Re: NewsGrazer crashes, GNUS doesn't
Organization: L5 Computing
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1992 11:41:39 GMT

In article <1992Apr13.124800.29827@cube.handheld.com> Jim De Arras  
<jmd@banana.handheld.com> writes:
|> In article <1992Apr13.183800.560@prim.uucp> dave@prim.uucp (Dave Griffiths)
|> writes:
|> >
|> >Sorry, can't resist! Why *do* people rave about NG? Is it just because
|> >it has a NeXTStep interface? 
|> 
|> Yes!  Those of us sold on NeXTstep, and GUIs in general, do NOT want a  
stupid
|> VT100 emulator running a cryptic newsreader with it's own set of 'commands'  
to
|> memorize and type in. However capable that command line reader may be.
NewsGrazer is more than just a fancy GUI face on rn. It does things that
rn can only dream of. Putting together multi-part postings is no fun using
ASCII based news readers. But NG makes the entire process of going from
chopped Usenet meat to fully decoded burger a VERY simple thing. Damn near
any idiot can walk into alt.binaries and start pulling out useful stuff without
much effort.

Subscribing to news groups is no sweat as well. Heck I can remeber trying to
"cruise" for "new" groups with rn/nn/trn. No fun at all, NG brings the powerful
NeXTStep browser into action and makes it possible to walk Usenet looking
around for interesting sounding groups like alt.great.ass.paulina. :)

And everything is there to be seen. One of the things I liked about nn was
that you could see all the subject lines before you read an article. One of
things I hated was you pretty much had to pick everything you wanted to see
before you got to see any of it. NG is like a jet cockpit, everything is there
and ready to be jumped to. All my subscribed groups are listed/sorted by
number of new articles, subject lines from current group, and the currently
selected news message. And the gages are all resizable, I want more subject
lines, grab and drag. I want more message on the screen at once, grab and
drag.

And don't forget that windows are the only way to fly when it comes to using
a multi-tasking machine. When you post you're spawned a posting window and
you can then whip around in NG, or anything else, looking for info you need
for your posting. Want to grab some lines from your /usr/local/bin/backmeup
program? No sweat, cut and paste. Then you need to cite something from another
article in the thread, no sweat, whip back into NG, find the stuff, cut n'
paste. And of these are a royal pain in the ass with ASCII based tools.
|> 
|> >I have a choice between NG and trn, and I
|> >use trn. Is there a rational reason for this? :-) Yes - it follows threads!
|> >If the subject changes in NG, you lose the thread. This seems a pretty
|> >basic shortcoming.
Threads? The thing I miss most is the kill file, NG has a pretty servicable
ability to follow subjects.

|> Yes, there's a lot wrong with NG.  Perhaps it's time to do a Mime version.   
But
|> a GUI interface beats a command line one, hands down. At least in my  
opinion.
MIMEing NG isn't the answer. Being *ABLE* to MIME NG is the answer. NeXT needs
to toss NG into a extended-extended release version of 3.0. I see this as
also being where they put the legally required source for supplied GNU
binaries as well. That CD-ROM is awfully damn big, it's got plenty of space
for GNU and NG source.

And as to how NG would be MIME'd, I think what will ultimately happen is that
NG will be extended to recognize MIME stuff and convert it to RTF. Much like
it does with uuencoded/shar'd stuff it runs accross now. As for posting
MIME, perhaps a "post as MIME" button on the "rich" posting panel. This
would take the RTF from the TextObject and run it through a MIMEer and
post that and the ASCII conversion just as is done for RTF.

Scotty