			     What is XRN?

  XRN is a Usenet News reader for the X window system.  It requires an
NNTP server to talk to (i.e., it cannot read news from local disk
files), and the NNTP server must support the XHDR command (most
servers nowadays do; if yours doesn't, XRN will complain when you try
to run it).

  Versions of XRN prior to 7.00 were maintained by Ellen Santovich and
Rick Spickelmier.  XRN is currently maintained by Jonathan Kamens.
But reports or comments about it should be sent to bug-xrn@cam.ov.com.
Please do *not* write to that address with basic questions about
compiling the program; if you are unfamiliar with compiling X
applications and the instructions below are not sufficient, you should
seek help at your site.


			   Where to get XRN

  The most recent production release of XRN can always be retrieved
from <ftp://remote-access.cam.ov.com/pub/xrn/xrn.tgz>.  The most
recent beta-test release of XRN can always be retried from
<ftp://remote-access.cam.ov.com/pub/xrn/beta.tgz>.  These files are
GNU tar archives compressed with GNU zip.


	      Interesting files in the XRN distribution

  There are a number of files in the XRN distribution besides the
actual source files for the program.  I maintain some of these files
actively.  Others are left over from before I started maintaining XRN,
and I have not reviewed them for correctness or updated them; use the
information in them at your own risk.  In the following list,
asterisks indicate files which I have tried to keep up-to-date (this
more files may be updated in future releases, especially if people
send me feedback about the out-of-date ones):

COMMON-PROBLEMS		A list of common problems and questions about
			the program, with explanations and solutions.
COPYRIGHT		Describes the copyright restrictions on XRN.
			I have left the University of California
			copyright intact, despite the fact that it's
			not clear at this point how much of the code
			was actually written by UC employees, because
			that's the easiest thing to do and it doesn't
			do any harm.
* ChangeLog		A list of changes from previous releases of
			XRN.  Note that because the last release of
			XRN was so long ago, and because the new
			release is so different from the previous
			release, I have not included ChangeLog entries
			for the new release.  I.e., the file is empty
			right now, but will contain entries in future
			releases.
* FIXERS		A list of people who have contributed to XRN.
			If you submit fixes, enhancements, etc., you
			will be added to this list unless you're
			already on it or you explicitly ask not to be
			put on the list.
* README		This file
TODO			A list of pending bug fixes and improvements
			to XRN.  If you're interested in helping to
			develop XRN, picking one of the items in this
			list and digging around in the source code to
			see what you can do about it is a good way to
			start.
Xresources.sample	A sample of how you might customize XRN in
			your own X resources.
contrib/*		Various scripts, hints, etc. contributed by
			XRN users and not "officially" part of XRN.
* doc/rfc977.txt	The Internet RFC governing NNTP, the Network
			News Transport Protocol, which XRN users to
			talk to the server.
* doc/strtok.doc	Documentation of the strtok() implementation
			included with XRN.
* doc/vprintf.doc	Documentation for the vprintf() implementation
			included with XRN.
* doc/vprintf.port	The original vprintf() implementation from
			which the one used in XRN is derived.
still-to-do/*		Various bug fixes that have not yet been
			examined or incorporated into the program.
			Some of these are probably obsolete.  I
			inherited them when I took over maintenance
			of the program, and I haven't done anything
			with them.


		      Supported/Tested Platforms

  This release has been compiled and run on SunOS 4.1.3, using gcc
2.4.5, with both X11R5 and X11R6 libraries.  Environments reported by
XRN testers include:

	SunOS 4.1.3, SunPro SPARCompiler C 2.0.1
	SunOS 4.1.3, gcc 2.5.8, X11R5
	Solaris 2.3, SunPro SPARCompiler C 2.0.1
	Solaris 2.3, gcc 2.6.0
	SGI
	BSD/386 V1.1
	HP-UX 9.05, c89

If you compile and run the program in a different environment, please
let me know so that I can list it here.

  The Motif support in XRN was implemented by Mike Yang, and he does
most of its maintenance.  If you send me a bug report that is specific
to the Motif version, I'll probably forward it to him rather than
fixing it myself.  Feel free to send such bug reports to me, though --
I like to keep track of bugs even if I can't fix them.

  The source code for XRN claims to support VMS.  However, I haaven't
tested the VMS code, and I suspect it hasn't actually been compiled or
used in a very long time, so I make no claims about its correctness or
reliability.  Furthermore, I cannot maintain the VMS code as
assiduously as the UNIX/Athena widget set code; i.e., if you send a
bug report about the VMS code, I'm unlikely to fix it.  It's much more
likely to be fixed if you send a patch.  In any case, if you do use
the the VMS code, I'd like to hear about it.

  Rick Murphy <murphy@ufp.dco.dec.com> has a version of XRN that runs
on VMS.  If you want to run XRN on VMS, you might want to get his
version instead of trying to compile this distribution on VMS.  Rick's
version is available as <ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/dxrn.tar.Z>.


		     Compiling and installing XRN

  The following steps are necessary in order to compile and install
XRN.  The last few steps are the standard method for compiling and
installing an X program; if you need more help with them, you should
look for it at your site.

1. Edit the Imakefile for your local configuration.  The comments in
   the file explain what needs to be edited.  Pay particular attention
   to "UseMotif" and "INN", which enable the Motif version of XRN and
   support for InterNetNews (INN).

2. Edit config.h for your local configuration.  The file is (sort of)
   arranged from most significant to least significant parameters, so
   if you get part-way through it and start to feel like you can just
   leave the rest as-is, you probably can.

   If you don't define a parameter that needs to be defined, you'll
   get an error during compilation.

   Make sure to delete the "#error" line near the top of config.h when
   you're done editing it for your local configuration.  That line is
   there to prevent you from trying to compile the program without
   configuring it first.  Do NOT define OV_CAMBRIDGE when compiling
   the program -- I use that symbol for my local configuration so that
   I can ship the same config.h as the one I use, so if you define it,
   you'll end up getting the configuration that I use locally (which
   is certainly not what you want).

   If you want to put all of your configuration paramaters in the
   SITE_DEFINES variable in the Imakefile, you can do that instead of
   editing config.h.  However, if you do that, make sure to put
   "-DCONFIG_H_IS_OK" in SITE_DEFINES.

3. Run "xmkmf".

4. Run "make".

5. Run "make install" to install the program and its application
   defaults file, and/or "make install.man" to install the man page.

   Note that XRN will not run correctly without its application
   defaults file installed.


			 The XRN mailing list

  If you would like to be informed of new releases of XRN and of any
major bugs that are discovered in between releases, you can subscribe
to the xrn-users@cam.ov.com mailing list.  It's an announcement list,
not a discussion list, so the traffic on it is very low.  If you're
interested, send mail to xrn-users-request@cam.ov.com and ask to be
added to the list.



I hope you find XRN useful!

  Jonathan Kamens
  jik@cam.ov.com

# $Header: /afs/gza.com/software/xrn/src/RCS/README,v 1.9 1994/10/12 13:11:59 jik Exp $
