DanNews - another throbbing Blender Software (BS) production ------------------------------------------------------------ This is DanNews, a NNTP/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 AmigaDIS set up (version 3 or above) ---------------------------------------------------- - If you want to change the options, edit the DanNews line in DIS:C/NewsRead and type ReProtect after saving. Extra stuff for AmigaDIS set up (version 2 or below) ---------------------------------------------------- - 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 AmiTCP-DIS set up --------------------------------- - 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,BLIP/K/N,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. - BLIP/K/N Shows a display of how long there is to go before the unbatch is finished. The number is how many articles are unbatched before the display's updated. Not enough and you might slow down the computer with too much printing on the screen. Too much and it's not very useful. I use 50. - 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 , 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). 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 dan@blender.demon.co.uk, if you spot a bug or something. Dan.