Re: general comment on CLA

[Samuel Tardieu <sam@ada.eu.org>]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert Dewar <dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu> writes:

Robert> I have investigated, and as far as I know, no newsreader has
Robert> this capability.  I have on my list to hack one so it does,
Robert> but goodness knows when I get around to that.

Gnus (see http://www.gnus.org/), the (IMHO) best newsreader (and also
mailreader) so far can do this very easily and this is even a FAQ.

For people who could be interested in Gnus, it is a software running
under (X)Emacs written by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen (lmi@gnus.org) which 
is very powerful. Since it runs under Emacs, it is available on almost 
every Unix platforms and under Windows NT.

I couldn't recommend another news software since Gnus has unique
features, such as: (some may be incorporated in other newsreaders, but 
probably not all of them)

  - adaptive scoring: if you want, Gnus can keep track of what words
    and combination of words you seem to be interested in. This way,
    it will increase the score of the threads containing these words;
    when you enter the group, the messages which are probably of
    highest interest to you are rpesented first

  - various backends: Gnus can read news and mail using NNTP, spool,
    Unix mail file, MH files, POP, IMAP, ... Your mails can be sorted
    into different groups (that have different priorities) based on
    the subject, the sender, the recipient, the body, ... Mails are
    shown just as news posts are, that is threaded, with priorities,
    with score and kill files, ...

  - some really useful backends such as the nnweb one: I can create a
    group which will consist into *any* article archived by Dejanews
    or Altavista for example containing the "Ada" word in the subject
    field. Gnus will make a HTTP connection to the search engine and
    will build an ephemeral group containing all the headers. When you 
    ask for an article, it will get it from the same source and
    present it to you

  - the current development version (called Quassia Gnus) contains a
    new "agent" which allows off-line mail and news reading and
    posting. When you're plugged in, Gnus downloads the new mails and
    news posts and sends the one it has queued for you when you were
    off-line

  - fully integrated MIME support using TM. If you get a picture by
    mail and are running XEmacs, then the picture will be presented in 
    your regular mail buffer if you are running under X

It would take too much time and space to describe all the great Gnus
features. It is really worth a try. And it is... free software :)

Gnus is part of the recent Emacs and XEmacs releases. GNUS (the former 
newsreader which has inspired Gnus) could only read news, so make sure 
you are running a pretty recent (X)Emacs.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org