Trn Kit, Version 3.0 Copyright (c) 1993, Wayne Davison Based on rn, Version 4.4 Copyright (c) 1985, Larry Wall Copyright (c) 1991, Stan Barber You may copy the trn kit in whole or in part as long as you don't try to make money off it, or pretend that you wrote it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- See the file INSTALL for installation instructions. Failure to do so may void your warranty. :-) After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed in MANIFEST (Configure checks this for you). What is trn? ------------ Trn is Threaded RN -- a newsreader that uses an article's references to order the discussions in a very natural, reply-ordered sequence called threads. Having the replies associated with their parent articles not only makes following the discussion easier, but also makes it easy to back- track and (re-)read a specific discussion from the beginning. Trn also has a visual representation of the current thread in the upper right corner of the header, which will give you a feel for how the discussion is going and how the current article is related to the last one you read. In addition, a thread selector makes it easy to browse through a large group looking for interesting articles. You can even browse through the articles you've already read and select the one(s) you wish to read again. Other nice features include the extract commands for the source and binary groups, thread-oriented kill directives, a better newgroup finding strategy, and lots more. See the file NEW for a list of the things that are new to trn 3.0 from previous versions. To make trn work faster you will probably want to create an auxiliary news database that summarises the available articles. Trn know how to use two different kinds (so far): thread files, which are maintained by the mthreads package and typically requires 3-5% of your newsspool size in disk storage; and overview files, which are maintained by INN v1.3 (or greater) or a modified version of C news and typically requires 8-10% of your newsspool size in disk storage. (Note that the space that mthreads saves you on your disk is paid for by a higher demand on your cpu and disks while updating the files.) See the package of your choice for details on how to setup the adjunct database, but it is not necessary to do this before trying out trn. Trn supports local news groups and news accessed remotely via NNTP. If you opt for remote access you will probably want to make the adjunct database available too. You can do this in a variety of way, but I recommend that you send the database from the server to the client via NNTP. To do this you either need to use INN or modify the reference NNTP (version 1.5.11) with the included patch (see nntp/nntp.patch). This patch supports both the XOVER command (to send .overview files) and the XTHREAD command (to send .thread files). The alternative is to either mount the disk containing your database via NFS, or build it locally. See the mthreads package for details on how to do this. Note that trn is based on rn, and so it does a great job of pretending to be rn for those people that simply don't like to change their newsreading habits. It is possible to install trn as both rn and trn linked together and have it act as both newsreaders, thus saving you the hassle of maint- aining two separate newsreaders. A Configuration question will ask you if you want trn to check its name on startup. Where to send bug reports ------------------------- Mail your bug reports to Wayne Davison . If you use the 'v'ersion command from the newsgroup selection level of trn you will be reminded of this address should you forget.