🚀 go-pugleaf

ed@dah.de.intel.com writes:

> I also had a lot of trouble getting trn to run, and (between core
> dumps) I didn't really like the interface much. I don't understand all
> the fuss over trn. I find that nn is much more robust and if I'm not
> mistaken also follows "threads". Would someone who has used both like
> to comment? Are nn and trn comparable in features? Am I missing out on
> something trn does that nn doesn't do?

Well, I've used nn a little; I found it too big a stretch from rn; at
the time they maintianed incompatible .newsrc files, though that's been
fixed, but the big problem I found was a fairly opaque user interface,
and a nasty habit of getting direct and inverse video backwards as often
as not.

Lots of people swear by nn, which _does_ follow threads, but its big
claim to fame is preprocessing kill file commands, so you never see the
articles at all.

I don't like, or use, kill files. The trn article selection interface is
very much like the rn "=" command interface (but with the ability to
select stuff as you go along, rather than after you've left the "="
listing), cleaned up and sorted by threads, and with the ability to mark
stuff to read or discard by whole threads at a time with a single
keystroke. That makes it worth my time to go through even multiple
hundred current unread article newsgroups and nuke the threads I want to
miss, which really doesn't take two minutes at 1200 baud, and leaves me
in complete control of what I read or don't and usually with half the
articles discarded quickly.

Example: some threads I would kill, but some authors I'd read even in
those killed threads. With trn, I can see who wrote what in the threads,
nuke the whole thread if no one interesting is contributing, or read it
and threadwalk quickly to the author I want if s/he's there.

For the experienced rn user who is not a kill file fan, trn is a much
easier move.

It does have a few bugs, but not important to its operation. It often
displays wildly inaccurate counts of articles left to read, it is a lot
of fun to see that I am seeing a windwo of articles 167% of the way
through the total display, and it walks the threads in order, but
between threads out of arrival time order (backwards, I've been told).
Perhaps as a result, it can give you an "end of newsgroup foo.bar"
message while several threads remain to be read, but it tells you that,
too.

As I said, these bugs are harmless, and the gain in newsgroup reading
efficiency is wonderful. I'm making it twice as far through my active
list in my .newsrc, these days, and I still retain complete control over
what I read, without kill file overenthusiasm.

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>