🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 24 Jul 1998 01:18:44 +0100, Anthony Naggs <amn@ubik.demon.co.uk>
wrote:

>As a little detour whilst looking at other packages, I want to see how
>difficult it would be to write my own news reader/collector.  Obviously
>I have RFC977 (& 850!), but I'm sure there must be supplementary
>material, (eg descriptions of XOVER & XHDR).  I'd appreciate suggestions
>of what to read & where to find it.  :-)

You should read the Usenet Seal of Approval (I don't have a local copy
here.. but a quick search of DejaNews/AltaVista should turn up a copy). 

I'm pretty sure that the advice given in that document to people
thinking of writing a newsreader is, basically, "don't", which may sound
disheartening but there are a number of fairly convincing arguments put
forward to dissuade potential authors of 'from scratch' readers.

Personally, I think Forte Agent is great - for both mail and news. My
only gripes are that the editor has no "Undo" facility, and the
Message-ID generation is broken by default (this is rectified with an
INI file modification, but /that/ leaves you without knowing the
Message-IDs of the articles you post until they actually appear on a
news server :( ).

Still, if you *do* decide to take the plunge and have a go at writing
one, I'd be delighted to be considered as an Alpha/Beta tester ;)
-- 
Chris Cowley