Newsreaders

[CBFalconer]

Why do many of you use newsreaders other than the one provided by
Google Groups?

What newsreader do you recommend, solely for comp.lang.c and why?

Because almost anything else is better. I recommend you try
Thunderbird, from mozilla.com. Versions are available for Windows,
Linux, MACs, Unix. It has the advantage that you don't need to
learn anything new when switching to a better OpSys.

Proper newsreaders require a newsfeed. Here are some free ones:

Some free news servers. I use motzarella and gmane.
<http://www.teranews.com> (1 time charge) (free)
<http://news.aioe.org> (free)
<http://dotsrc.org> (free)
<http://www.x-privat.org/international.php> (free)
<http://motzarella.org/?language=en> (free)
<http://dotsrc.org/usenet/>(via://dotsrc.org/usenet/)(free)
<http://gmane.org/> (mail-lists via news) (free)
<http://www.newsfeeds.com/signup.htm> (pay)
<http://www.individual.net/ (low pay)

 

[Richard]

Because almost anything else is better. I recommend you try
Thunderbird, from mozilla.com. Versions are available for Windows,
Linux, MACs, Unix. It has the advantage that you don't need to
learn anything new when switching to a better OpSys.

What is an OpSys? Please don't use slang as we do not know what you
mean. Do you mean Operating System? In that case why do you think your
OS, Windows, is better than mine which is Linux?

Proper newsreaders require a newsfeed. Here are some free ones:

Some free news servers. I use motzarella and gmane.
<http://www.teranews.com> (1 time charge) (free)

Adds extra .signatures to spam the posts. You used to use it and annoy
everyone for ages.

<http://news.aioe.org> (free)

Killfiled by many.

<http://dotsrc.org> (free)
<http://www.x-privat.org/international.php> (free)
<http://motzarella.org/?language=en> (free)

The best is Motzarella IMO

 

[Albert]

just because one newsreader may be right for "lots of
people" doesn't mean it's right for you.

How would I determine if a newsreader is right for me, in your opinion?

 

[Hallvard B Furuseth]

Why do many of you use newsreaders other than the one provided by
Google Groups?

Possibly the real answer to your question is: No, newsgroups are not a
feature created by Google, though I gather they've added their own ones
to the mix. Newsgroups - USENET - are a 30 years old filesharing
network of sorts, for which Google Groups is now one of the newsreaders.

However Google Groups is not and likely cannot be a very good
newsreader, because a good newsreader provides a lot of functionality
which it's difficult to fit into a convenient webpage interface. Just
like an editor-in-a-webpage sucks compared to an editor program on your
computer, though maybe not so badly.

What newsreader do you recommend, solely for comp.lang.c and why?

Well, probably not the one I use (Gnus) - not easy enough to learn to
bother with for so light newsgroup use.

 

[Richard Bos]

Why do many of you use newsreaders other than the one provided by
Google Groups?

Since when does Google Broken Beta provide a newsreader? What it
provides is a broken news server attached to a broken web board.

What newsreader do you recommend, solely for comp.lang.c and why?

Forte (Free) Agent, obviously. Also Fortitude Dialog. Or XNews. Nothing
made by Microsoft, naturally. Also, I can't recommend Mozilla
Chunderbird, though others seem to like it.

Richard

 

[Richard Bos]

You are assuming that all newsreadres are browser based. They are not. With
the newsreader I am using (do not look for it in the headers, it will not be
named there, but it is "rn") everything is textbased in a terminal window and
so everything is in the same monospaced font. Usenet groups are *not* web
content, they go beyond the web.

Usenet doesn't just go beyond the web, it is entirely separate from the
web. Google Broken Beta, and some similar portals, shuffle posts back
and forth between Usenet and web boards, but Usenet runs over NNTP and
the web over HTTP.
FWIW, I've never seen any newsreader that was browser-based.

Richard

 

[James Kuyper]

How would I determine if a newsreader is right for me, in your opinion?

That's not a question that anyone else can aswer for you, any more than
anyone else can tell you what your favorite color is. If you yourself
are unable to determine which of several different newsreaders is right
for you, then by definition, it doesn't matter: just choose randomly
from among them.

 

[Default User]

Greetings.

Maybe some newsreaders have syntax highlighting...? (Actually, just
to satisfy my curiousity, I would be interested to know if there are
any.)

None that I've ever heard of. It would be a non-trivial task to have
the newsreader recognize that there was code embedded in a message,
determine which language, and then apply syntax highlighting.





Brian

 

[Mark Wooding]

Maybe some newsreaders have syntax highlighting...? (Actually, just to
satisfy my curiousity, I would be interested to know if there are any.)

I'm sure that one could persuade Gnus to do such a thing. The tricky
part is getting it to work out which parts of an article ought to be
fontified as C code (rather than as article text, Python, Lisp, C++,
Javascript, or anything else).

-- [mdw]

 

[Albert]

I recommend you try Thunderbird, from mozilla.com.

I've installed it. However, I'm a little confused. What exactly does
Thunderbird do? It seems to do a lot of things, and I get the
impression that a lot of it is not needed for better viewing and
navigation of comp.lang.c (full stop)

How do I view this post in Mozilla Thunderbird?
I really can't believe myself getting lost in a bit of forum-like
reading software...

Albert

 

[James Kuyper]

I've installed it. However, I'm a little confused. What exactly does
Thunderbird do? It seems to do a lot of things, and I get the
impression that a lot of it is not needed for better viewing and
navigation of comp.lang.c (full stop)

How do I view this post in Mozilla Thunderbird?
I really can't believe myself getting lost in a bit of forum-like
reading software...

<OT>
Thunderbird really only does two things: e-mail and newsgroups.
The key thing you need to do before you can read any newsgroups is to
configure Thunderbird so it knows how to connect to your news server.
Select from the top menu "Edit/Account Settings". A window will pop up,
from which you need to select "Add Account". Another window will pop up,
in which you must select "Newsgroup Account". From there on in, it's
just a matter of filling in the details. If you have any questions about
filling in those details, please go to
<http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/> for answers. The support
forums may get you better answers than searching the knowledge base,
which always seems to be a little out-of-date with respect to the most
recent thunderbird release.
</OT>

 

[Antoninus Twink]

X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win98; U) [snip]
I recommend you try Thunderbird, from mozilla.com.

Physician, heal thyself.

It has the advantage that you don't need to learn anything new when
switching to a better OpSys.

I expect the OP will be following your "upgrade" path to Win98 any day
now.

 

[Richard]

X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win98; U) [snip]
I recommend you try Thunderbird, from mozilla.com.

Physician, heal thyself.

It has the advantage that you don't need to learn anything new when
switching to a better OpSys.

I expect the OP will be following your "upgrade" path to Win98 any day
now.

Falconer really does take the biscuit. He spams the group endlessly with
double signatures, finally takes advice and moves from teranews and now
criticises "Doze" while using a crappy news reader on a crappy version
of Windows. What a total and utter arsehole he is.

 

[Tony]

Greetings.




None that I've ever heard of. It would be a non-trivial task to have
the newsreader recognize that there was code embedded in a message,
determine which language, and then apply syntax highlighting.

<begin_code_passage: lang_C>

int main()
{
return 1;
}

<end_code_passage>

At least that part looks trivial (specify instead of recognize). Surely if
one has already a text editor window then adding syntax highlighting
probably isn't that difficult (depending on the software design). NNTP is a
bit long in the tooth, but at least it works and you have a choice of
interfaces. IMO, web interfaces to threaded discussion is horrendous. It
would be nice to replace NNTP though with something having "a few" more
features. Text-only is pretty limiting when discussing designs, for example.

Tony

 

[Tony]

Since when does Google Broken Beta provide a newsreader? What it
provides is a broken news server attached to a broken web board.

Forte (Free) Agent, obviously. Also Fortitude Dialog. Or XNews. Nothing
made by Microsoft, naturally. Also, I can't recommend Mozilla
Chunderbird, though others seem to like it.

I don't have major issues with MS OE. I used to use Gravity and it is
available as open source.

Tony

 

[CBFalconer]

I've installed it. However, I'm a little confused. What exactly
does Thunderbird do? It seems to do a lot of things, and I get
the impression that a lot of it is not needed for better viewing
and navigation of comp.lang.c (full stop)

How do I view this post in Mozilla Thunderbird? I really can't
believe myself getting lost in a bit of forum-like reading
software...

What news-server did you install? If your ISP has a free one, ask
your ISP. Otherwise ask the news-server people. In general the
server requires a name and password to connect, and you configure
Thunderbird to use it by specifying the access URL.

 

[Stephen Sprunk]

IMO, web interfaces to threaded discussion is horrendous.

Some of them are decent, but I would agree that the vast majority border
on unusable, including GG.

It would be nice to replace NNTP though with something having "a few"
more features. Text-only is pretty limiting when discussing designs,
for example.

While some old-timers may dislike it, the use of MIME with news is fully
defined, in widespread use, and has all of the same functionality (e.g.
Unicode, images, HTML messages, attachments, signatures, etc.) that MIME
email does. The differences (NNTP vs SMTP) are minor enough that it's
practically free for developers to add news support to modern email
programs, which also makes things easier for users (one less new program
to install, learn, customize, update, etc.).

S

 

[Spiros Bousbouras]

Some of them are decent, but I would agree that the vast majority border
on unusable, including GG.

In what way is a newsreader interface for reading better
than Google groups ?

 

[Mark Wooding]

In what way is a newsreader interface for reading better than Google
groups ?

1. It's much more responsive, particularly if you either (a) have a
local news server (though setting up a news server is a serious
undertaking for a beginner) or (b) your newsreader supports
collecting news in bulk. Google Groups makes you fetch a few
articles at a time, and then collect the next bunch and so on.

2. Threading seems much better in real newsreaders. Google Groups
shows you even fewer articles at a time if you turn on the tree
view -- and it doesn't provide a particularly helpful view of the
thread, and doesn't tie up to the individual articles very well.

3. At least for me, Google Groups randomly collapses a selection of
articles which is a major nuisance when I'm reading through an old
thread. Newsreaders don't do this stupid thing.

4. Killfiles, so you don't have to wade through piffle posted by
idiots like me if you don't want to. If you get a vaguely fancy
newsreader, you can score up articles which interest you
especially, e.g., follow-ups to your own messages and their
descendants, or articles posted by people you find particularly
interesting.

5. Major bonus for me: I get to use a proper editor for composing
messages, rather than the crappy multiline widgets you get in web
browsers. (You don't think I word-wrap these indented paragraphs
by hand, do you? ;-) )

It comes down to this: a newsreader is a specific tool, honed for the
job of reading news. It's capable of providing a user interface which
makes reading news pleasant and efficient (though different news readers
have different ideas about how to do this -- pick one that suits you,
'cos there are lots out there). Anything web-based has to make
compromises in order to fit into the limitations of web browser
interfaces.

This is all off-topic for comp.lang.c, so I'll not respond on this
thread again.

-- [mdw]

 

[Spiros Bousbouras]

1. It's much more responsive, particularly if you either (a) have a
local news server (though setting up a news server is a serious
undertaking for a beginner) or (b) your newsreader supports
collecting news in bulk. Google Groups makes you fetch a few
articles at a time, and then collect the next bunch and so on.

I don't understand what you mean by fetch few articles at a
time. You have at your fingertips the whole collection of
articles for as far back as the archive goes.

2. Threading seems much better in real newsreaders. Google Groups
shows you even fewer articles at a time if you turn on the tree
view -- and it doesn't provide a particularly helpful view of the
thread, and doesn't tie up to the individual articles very well.

If you turn on tree view you have on the left of the screen the
whole clickable collection of articles in a thread but you have
to scroll the list up and down if the thread is long. So I don't
understand what you mean by "fewer articles". I prefer the
"normal" view where I can see a whole collection of articles as
a continuous stream. In the ordering of the articles the
responses almost always appear after the "responded to" article.

3. At least for me, Google Groups randomly collapses a selection of
articles which is a major nuisance when I'm reading through an old
thread. Newsreaders don't do this stupid thing.

It only does that if you have searched for a string ; if you
just click on an old thread it shows you the whole thread. I
don't see how this is comparable with a newsreader.

4. Killfiles, so you don't have to wade through piffle posted by
idiots like me if you don't want to. If you get a vaguely fancy
newsreader, you can score up articles which interest you
especially, e.g., follow-ups to your own messages and their
descendants, or articles posted by people you find particularly
interesting.

Ok , that makes sense. Better spam filtering in a newsreader
too.

5. Major bonus for me: I get to use a proper editor for composing
messages, rather than the crappy multiline widgets you get in web
browsers. (You don't think I word-wrap these indented paragraphs
by hand, do you? ;-) )

Well , I did ask for reading rather than posting. But for any
but the shortest responses I use vim rather than the Google
interface so the difference is just 2 cut and pastes.