Newsgroups: bit.listserv.sedsnews
Date:         Wed, 4 Nov 1992 19:52:50 CST
From:         "H. Alan Montgomery" <FHD@TAMVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      Source of NetNews Readers

I am posting this for people who want to use the UseNet News using a news
reader rather than have e-mail sent to them. At the moment it looks  like
the election has inundated UseNet News. Real surprise. eh.
-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-=<*>=-
>Archive-name: usenet-software/part1
>Original from: spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford)
>Last-change: 18 Oct 1992 by spaf@purdue (Gene Spafford)
>
>
>Currently, Usenet readers interact with the news using a number of
>software packages and programs.  This article mentions the important
>ones and a little of their history, gives pointers where you can look
>for more information and ends with some special notes about "foreign"
>and "obsolete" software.  At the very end is a list of sites from which
>current versions of the Usenet software may be obtained.
>
>Note that the number of software packages available to run news,
>especially on PCs, is increasing.  This article lists only a few of
>the many news packages available, and the presence or absence of any
>particular software package should not be construed as indicating
>anything about its suitability usefulness.
>
>History
>-------
>Usenet came into being in late 1979, shortly after the release of V7
>Unix with UUCP.  Two Duke University grad students in North Carolina,
>Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, thought of hooking computers together to
>exchange information with the Unix community.  Steve Bellovin, a grad
>student at the University of North Carolina, put together the first
>version of the news software using shell scripts and installed it on
>the first two sites: "unc" and "duke." At the beginning of 1980 the
>network consisted of those two sites and "phs" (another machine at
>Duke), and was described at the January Usenix conference.  Steve
>Bellovin later rewrote the scripts into C programs, but they were never
>released beyond "unc" and "duke." Shortly thereafter, Steve Daniel did
>another implementation in C for public distribution.  Tom Truscott made
>further modifications, and this became the "A" news release.
>
>In 1981 at U. C. Berkeley, grad student Mark Horton and high school
>student Matt Glickman rewrote the news software to add functionality
>and to cope with the ever increasing volume of news -- "A" News was
>intended for only a few articles per group per day.  This rewrite was
>the "B" News version.  The first public release was version 2.1 in
>1982; the 1.* versions were all beta test.  As the net grew, the news
>software was expanded and modified.  The last version maintained and
>released primarily by Mark was 2.10.1.
>
>Rick Adams, at the Center for Seismic Studies, took over coordination
>of the maintenance and enhancement of the B News software with the
>2.10.2 release in 1984.  By this time, the increasing volume of news
>was becoming a concern, and the mechanism for moderated groups was
>added to the software at 2.10.2.  Moderated groups were inspired by
>ARPA mailing lists and experience with other bulletin board systems.
>In late 1986, version 2.11 of B News was released, including a number
>of changes to support a new naming structure for newsgroups, enhanced
>batching and compression, enhanced ihave/sendme control messages, and
>other features.
>
>The current release of B News is 2.11, patchlevel 19.  Article format
>is specified in RFC 1036 (see below).  B News has been declared "dead"
>by a number of people, including Rick Adams, and is unlikely to be
>upgraded further; most new UUCP sites are using C News (see next
>paragraph).
>
>A new version of news, known as C News, was developed at the
>University of Toronto by Geoff Collyer and Henry Spencer.  This
>version is a rewrite of the lowest levels of news to increase article
>processing speed, decrease article expiration processing and improve
>the reliability of the news system through better locking, etc.  The
>package was released to the net in the autumn of 1987.  For more
>information, see the paper "News Need Not Be Slow," published in The
>Winter 1987 Usenix Technical Conference proceedings.  The current
>version of C News is labeled 27-Aug-1991.  C News can be obtained from
>its official archive site, cs.toronto.edu, using FTP.
>
>Another Usenet system, known as InterNetNews, or INN, was written by
>Rich Salz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net>.  INN is designed to run on Unix hosts
>that have a socket interface.  It is optimized for larger hosts where
>most traffic uses NNTP, but it does provide full UUCP support.  INN is
>very fast, and since it integrates NNTP many people find it easier to
>administer only one package.  The package was publicly released on
>August 20, 1992.  For more information, see the paper "InterNetNews:
>Usenet Transport for Internet Sites" published in the June 1992 Usenix
>Technical Conference Proceedings.  INN can be obtained from many
>places; its official archive site is ftp.uu.net in the directory
>networking/news/nntp/inn.
>
>ANU-NEWS is news package written by Geoff Huston of Australia for VMS
>systems.  ANU-NEWS is complete news system that allows reading,
>posting, direct replies, moderated newsgroups, etc.  in a fashion
>closely related to regular news.  The implementation includes the RFC
>1036 news propagation algorithms and integrated use of the NNTP
>protocols (see below) to support remote news servers, implemented as a
>VAX/VMS Decnet object.  An RFC 977 server implemented as a Decnet
>object is also included.  The ANU-NEWS interface is similar to
>standard DEC screen oriented systems.  The license for the software is
>free, and there are no restrictions on the re-distribution.  For more
>info, contact gih900@fac.anu.oz.au (Geoff Huston).  ANU-NEWS is
>available for FTP from kuhub.cc.ukans.edu.  Contact
>SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU for more info.
>
>A screen-oriented news client for VMS that works with CMU/tek, EXOS,
>MultiNet, UCX, Wollongong and DECnet is also available via ftp from
>iraun1.ira.uka.de, info.rz.uni-ulm.de, and ftp.spc.edu (contact Bernd
>Onasch <onasch@ira.uka.de> for details).
>
>A port of C News for the Commodore Amiga under AmigaDOS (NOT Unix), is
>available.  The port was done by Frank J. Edwards <crash@ckctpa.uucp>,
>and available from Larry Rosenman <ler@lerami.lerctr.org>.  Also,
>Matt Dillon <dillon@overload.berkely.ca.us>, has greatly improved the
>UUCP clone for AmigaDOS, currently V1.16D, available for ftp from
>ftp.uu.net in /systems/amiga/dillon.  The package also includes a
>newsreader very loosely like the real rn.  Dillon also has a "vn" port
>provided by Eric Lee Green.  This software is also available on Bix,
>and for ftp from ab20.larc.nasa.gov.
>
>Several popular screen-oriented news reading interfaces have been
>developed in the last few years to replace the traditional "readnews"
>interface.  The first of these was "vnews" and it was written by
>Kenneth Almquist.  "vnews" provides a "readnews"-like command
>interface, but displays articles using direct screen positioning.  It
>appears to have been inspired, to some extent, by the "notes" system
>(described below).  "vnews" is currently distributed with the standard
>2.11 news source.
>
>A second, more versatile interface, "rn", was developed by Larry Wall
>(the author of Perl) and released in 1984.  This interface also uses
>full-screen display with direct positioning, but it includes many
>other useful features and is very popular with many regular net
>readers.  The interface includes reading, discarding, and/or
>processing of articles based on user-definable patterns, and the
>ability of the user to develop customized macros for display and
>keyboard interaction.  "rn" is currently at release 4.4.  It is being
>maintained by Stan Barber of the Baylor College of Medicine.  "rn" is
>not provided with the standard news software release, but is very
>widely available because of its popularity.  The software can be
>obtained from its official archive site, lib.tmc.edu, using FTP, and
>via mail from archive-server@bcm.tmc.edu
>
>A variant of "rn" is "trn" by Wayne Davison. Trn adds the ability to
>follow "threads of discussions" in newsgroups; its latest version 2.2
>is based on rn 4.4. It uses a Reference-line database to allow the
>user to take advantage of the "discussion tree" formed by an article
>and its replies.  This results in a true reply-ordered reading of the
>articles, complete with a small ascii representation of the current
>article's position in the discussion tree. Trn can be obtained from
>ftp.coe.montana.edu in the /pub/trn directory, from uunet in the
>news subdirectory, and from many other archive servers world-wide.
>
>xrn is an X11-based interface to NNTP that was written by Rick
>Spickelmier and Ellen Sentovich (UC Berkeley).  The current version is
>6.17.  xrn supports many features, including sorting by subject,
>user-settable key bindings, graceful handling of NNTP server crashes,
>and many of the features of rn (including KILL files and key bindings
>similar to rn).  xrn is actively supported by the authors with bug
>fixing and feature addition support from many of the users.  xrn can
>be retrieved from most of the popular FTP sites (gatekeeper.dec.com,
>ftp.uu.net, export.lcs.mit.edu).
>
>Another X11-based newsreader is xvnews.  This is a news reader
>designed primarily for Sun workstations running OpenWindows.  It runs
>with NNTP and is compatible with rn style commands. It is available
>from export.lcs.mit.edu in the contrib directory.
>
>There are two popular macro packages named "GNUS" and "Gnews" that can
>be used with the GNU Emacs text editor.  These allow reading,
>replying, and posting interaction with the news from inside the Emacs
>text editor.  Client code exists to get the articles using NNTP rather
>than from a local disk.  Copies can be found on most archive sites
>that carry the GNU archives.
>
>"nn" is yet another reader interface, developed by Kim F. Storm of
>Texas Instruments A/S, Denmark, and released in 1989.  nn differs from
>the traditional readnews and vnews by presenting a menu of article
>subject and sender-name lines, allowing you to preselect articles to
>read.  nn is also a very fast newsreader, as it keeps a database of
>article headers on-line.  (I.e. it trades space for time.  A good rule
>of thumb is that the nn database size is 5%-10% of your news spool.
>So up to 110% of your news spool is the amount of space news and the
>nn database will take.)  The current version of nn is 6.4.16.  nn can
>be obtained via anonymous FTP from dkuug.dk, uop.uop.edu, or various
>other sites; European sites should request the sources from their
>nearest backbone site.
>
>Yet another newsreader is the "tin" reader.  It operates with threads,
>has different article organization methods, and is full-screen
>oriented.  tin works on a local news spool or over an NNTP connection.
>It has been posted to alt.sources, and further information is
>available from Iain Lea (iain%anl433.uucp@Germany.EU.net). The current
>release of tin is 1.1 PL5.  Tin is based more on the Notes and tass
>systems than "rn".  There is an extensive list of features, including
>interfaces to batch modes and auto unpacking mechanisms.
>
>In March 1986 a package was released implementing news transmission,
>posting, and reading using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
>(as specified in RFC 977).  This protocol allows hosts to exchange
>articles via TCP/IP connections rather than using the traditional
>uucp.  It also permits users to read and post news (using a modified
>version of "rn" or other user agents) from machines which cannot or
>choose not to install the USENET news software.  Reading and posting
>are done using TCP/IP messages to a server host which does run the
>USENET software.  Sites which have many workstations like the Sun and
>Apollo products find this a convenient way to allow workstation users
>to read news without having to store articles on each system.  Many of
>the Usenet hosts that are also on the Internet exchange news articles
>using NNTP because the load impact of NNTP is much lower than uucp
>(and NNTP ensures much faster propagation).
>
>NNTP grew out of independent work in 1984-1985 by Brian Kantor at U.
>C.  San Diego and Phil Lapsley at U. C. Berkeley.  It is now in
>release 1.5.11 dated 11 february 1991, with the next planned release
>at 1.6.  NNTP includes support for System V UNIX with Excelan Ethernet
>cards and DECNET under Ultrix.  NNTP was developed at U. C. Berkeley
>by Phil Lapsley with help from Erik Fair, Steven Grady, and Mike
>Meyer, among others.  The NNTP package is distributed on the 4.3BSD
>release tape (although that is version 1.2a and out-of-date) and is
>also available from the various authors, many major hosts, and by
>anonymous FTP from lib.tmc.edu, mthvax.cs.miami.edu and ftp.uu.net.
>
>Reader NNTP clients for VMS are also available, including VMS/VNEWS
>(current release 1.4) and an upcoming reader only version of ANU-NEWS.
>VMS/VNEWS is available via anonymous ftp from arizona.edu (contact
>jms@arizona.edu for more information) or at any site which archives
>vmsnet.source.  Although the current release of ANU-NEWS is usable as
>a reader it can be difficult when used with a UNIX server.
>
>An NNTP newsreader for Macintoshs is available called HyperNews.  It
>is implemented as a HyperCard stack and depends on MacTCP.  It is
>available from many Mac archives, including ftp.apple.com and
>sumex-aim.stanford.edu
>
>There is also an NNTP-based netnews reader for Symbolics Lisp Machines
>(under Genera 7) available for anonymous FTP from ucbvax.berkeley.edu
>[128.32.133.1] in pub/nntp-clients/lispm written by Ian Connolly
><connolly@coins.cs.umass.edu> and maintained by Richard Welty
><welty@lewis.crd.ge.com>.  In addition, another NNTP-based news
>browser is available running under Genera 7 and Genera 8.  It provides
>mouse driven hierarchic browsing of newsgroups and articles, with
>support for X11 servers on remote machines.  It is available for
>anonymous FTP on flash.bellcore.com [128.96.32.20] in the directory
>pub/lispm/news-reader/.  It is written and maintained by Peter
>Clitherow <pc@bellcore.com>
>
>A TOPS-20 reader was developed by Dave Edwards of SRI
><dle@kl.sri.com>, but current availability is unknown.  An NNTP reader
>suite for PC's running MS-DOS and having Excelan boards is available
>for ftp from ames.arc.nasa.gov; get the pcrrn files.  There are two
>MS-DOS news readers that can be obtained from bcm.tmc.edu in the "nfs"
>directory.  They both require PC-NFS (from Sun) to work.  They will
>both work under PC/TCP from FTP Software early this year.  Source will
>be provided at that time.
>
>"trumpet" is a NNTP based news reader for DOS which will also run
>under Windows (although only as a DOS application). There is Lan
>Workplace version which is also available.  It works using the
>Clarkson Packet Drivers either over a Novell network or a PC with an
>'ordinary' TCP/IP connection. It offers a very intuitive interface
>with most of the basic facilities required in a newsreader (but
>without some of the 'bells and whistles found in something like rn).
>It has facilities for using SMTP to forward/reply etc.  The latest
>version is 1.05g and is shareware available at most main ftp sites.
>
>At least one IBM VM/SP (CMS) version of the Usenet software is
>available.  It is known as PSU NetNews, and it is maintained by Linda
>Littleton (lrl@psuvm.bitnet/psuvm.psu.edu).  Version 2.4 of the
>software is available from LISTSERV@PSUVM.  PSU NetNews supports only
>3270 terminals, and uses XEDIT as its screen driver.  Most major VM
>sites appear to use this package.  NetNews supports locally-stored
>news, not NNTP reading.
>
>There is NNTP support for PSU NetNews for bulk news receipt: NNTPXFER
>will poll another site for news, and NNTPRCVR will receive news sent
>from a Unix NNTPXMIT process.  Either program sends the news articles
>to NetNews for processing.  Contact Andy Hooper (hooper@qucdn.bitnet
>or qucdn.queensu.ca) for more information, or obtain them from
>listserv@qucdn in PUBLIC FILELIST.  These programs are provided with
>source, and require IBM's FAL TCP/IP and Pascal.  An NNTPXMIT sender
>that works in cooperation with PSU NETNEWS is available from Herman
>Van Uytven (SYSTHVU@cc1.kuleuven.ac.be).
>
>There is at least one NNTP news-reader for VM using XEDIT as its
>screen manager: NNR.  Contact Paul Campbell (pc@mbunix.mitre.org) for
>information.  The program requires IBM's FAL TCP/IP.  The software is
>available for anonymous ftp from rusmv1.rus.uni-stuttgart.de
>[129.69.1.12] in the directory
>soft/kommunikation/news/beginner/software/vm-cms/*.
>
>An NNTP news reader is available for TSO/ISPF, called NNMVS. NNMVS is
>written by Stephen Bacher <seb1525@mvs.draper.com> at Draper
>Laboratory.  It requires C/370 V1R2 (though V1R1 will work) and uses
>TCP/IP sockets.  It is now available via anonymous ftp at
>ftp.uni-stuttgart.de under the directory
>/soft/kommunikation/news/beginner/software/nnmvs.  The current release
>is Version 2 Release 3 Modification Level 1 (in pseudo-IBM parlance).
>
>
>Special note on "notes" and old versions of news
>------------------------------------------------
>Users of these systems may note problems in their interactions with the
>Usenet.  In particular, postings may be made by "notes" users to
>moderated groups but they will not usually propagate throughout the
>entire Usenet.  The same may happen to users of old B news software.
>
>The "notes" software package uses a different internal organization of
>articles, and a different interchange format than that of the standard
>Usenet software.  It was inspired by the notesfiles available in the
>PLATO system and was developed independently from the Usenet news.
>Eventually, the "notes" network and Usenet were joined via gateways
>doing (sometimes imperfect) protocol translation.  The interface for
>"notes" is similar to "rn" but implements different features, many of
>which are dictated by its internal organization.  "notes" was written
>in 1980-1981 by Ray Essick and Rob Kolstad, (then) grad students at
>the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The first public
>release of "notes" was at the January 1982 Usenix conference.  The
>last release of notes was version 1.7; it is no longer being
>actively maintained.
>
>Users of "notes" or old B news software wishing to post to moderated
>groups should either mail their submissions to the moderator, as
>listed in the monthly posting of "List of Moderators" in the group
>"news.lists", or else they should post from a system running
>up-to-date news software (i.e., C news or INN).  "notes" users may
>obtain some patches from the comp.sources.unix archives which enable
>the most recent versions of "notes" to interact with moderated groups
>properly.
>
>Users of old B news and "notes" are also not able to take advantage of
>some other current B news features, such as the "checkgroups" message.
>"notes" continues to be a "foreign" system and B news versions are
>considered "obsolete."  The various maintainers of the Usenet software
>have never expressed any commitment to maintain backwards
>compatibility with "foreign" or obsolete news systems and are unlikely
>to do so; it is the responsibility of the users to maintain
>compatibility of such software if they wish to continue to interact
>with the Usenet.
>
>
>Software versions & availability
>--------------------------------
>You can obtain the version number of your news software by issuing
>some form of "v" command to show the current version -- consult the
>man page for details.  Current software is obtainable from almost any
>major Usenet site as well as the sites noted in the body of the
>article, above.
>
>
>The following sites probably have sources to the current news software
>available for anyone needing a copy:
>
>         Site      Contact
>         ----      -------
>         munnari        kre@munnari.oz.au
>         osu-cis        postmaster@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
>         philabs        usenet@philabs.philips.com
>         pyramid        usenet@pyramid.com
>         rutgers        usenet@rutgers.edu
>         tektronix news@tektronix.tek.com
>         watmath        usenet@watmath.waterloo.edu
>
>Sources for most of the news readers and software, including news
>2.11, C News, "rn", and "trn" are also available in the
>comp.sources.unix archives.  European sites should request the sources
>from their nearest Eunet backbone site.
>
>Standards
>---------
>News programs communicate with each other according to standard protocols,
>some of which are described by RFCs.  An RFC is a Request For Comment, a
>de facto standard in the Internet Community.  It is a form of published
>software standard, done through the Network Information Center (NIC) at SRI.
>Copies of RFCs are often posted to the net and obtainable from archive sites.
>Current news-related RFCs include the following:
>
>    RFC 822 specifies the format of messages; RFC 1036 uses this.
>    RFC 977 specifies NNTP, the Network News Transfer Protocol.
>    RFC 1036 specifies the format of Usenet articles.
>    RFC 1123 amends RFC 822.
>    RFC 1153 specifies the digest format some moderated groups use.
>
>Newsgroups
>----------
>
>The following newsgroups cover issues discussed in this article, and can
>be consulted for recent developments.
>
>gnu.emacs.gnews         News reading under GNU Emacs using Weemba's Gnews.
>gnu.emacs.gnus          News reading under GNU Emacs using GNUS (in English).
>news.software.anu-news  VMS B-news software from Australian National Univ.
>news.software.b         Discussion about B-news-compatible software.
>news.software.nn   Discussion about the "nn" news reader package.
>news.software.notes     Notesfile software from the Univ. of Illinois.
>news.software.readers   General discussion about news reading software.
>
>Acknowledgements
>----------------
>The preparation of this article (and Usenet itself!) was greatly
>enhanced by the contributions and assistance of the following persons:
>Steve Bellovin, Ray Essick, Mark Horton, Brian Kantor, Phil Lapsley,
>Bob Page, Rich Salz, Tom Truscott, and Larry Wall.  Thanks, folks.
>--
>Gene Spafford
>Software Engineering Research Center & Dept. of Computer Sciences
>Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398
>Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu     phone:  (317) 494-7825
>