Re: Mix of Ideas (Please read the first lineas at least to decide)

[Gianluca Montecchi <gm518464 silab dsi unimi it>]

On Fri, 6 Feb 1998, Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero wrote:

> # Newsreader
> 
> I think that a good newsreader is a must.

As I said yesterday, I will begin to work on it, is noboby are working
too.

> The problem I see with current readers is that you must use a news server
> only (or install one in you dial up computer and retrieve lots of MB).
> Someone has knows another way?

It is possible to use skim.  
Skim is a off-line news reader. From the skim README 
"Skim is a graphical offline newsreader for Linux. Skim is designed to
minimize the on-line time when it's used over a slow modem line (e.g.
14K4 Slip/PPP). "


> Have someone seen Free Agent (Windoze)? It is a offline newsreader, that
> downloads the news you want, nothing more. I think that a newsreader of this
> kind will be very interesting (specially if you pay phone bills in a "per
> min" base).

I also think this, so I get also skim and try to buid something on it
instead of slrn. 

> The solution I see is a newsreader that stores a list of requests from users
> and when there is connection (maybe when root or user launchs a "getnews")
> it downloads all.
> The news are then stored in a common dir, where all users can read them
> (even if they not requested them). Users can lock some news to avoid
> deletion (except by root commands), so they will stay for future reading.
> When a user wants more news, the list is redefined and in next connection,
> etc, etc...
> The reason for "low traffic, dynamic, common news dir" and a set of app that
> uses them (getnews, newsclient, and maybe a newsmonitor for root tasks) is
> because it provides a good performance for home users (Free Agent works
> really fine with my 28.8K), even if the computer is used by two or three ppl
> (family, *friends) or one person with different accounts (like me: povuser,
> root, normal).

Well, as I can undestand, skim also do this and it has a set of standard
directory and fileswhere it stores the article, newsgroup ans so on. 
It is also possible to set a different directory for each user, so
(in theory) every user had a different set of newsgroup to download.

In my opinion can be a good idea to port skim under gnome, better than
use slrn. skim now has a gui in Tcl/Tk.

The license is ok, itis under GPL.

Anybody as some comments ?


> # PS PDF and so on
> 
> Why x different apps when all be similar?
> GV joins lot of things, all related to read docs, and/or print them.

Only one thing: reading the Readme file of xpdf, I find that also some
method use to compress the pdf file are patented. Is this true? The author
speakabout some LZW method that are used also in the gif file format.

> # Mailer
> 
> I have seen XFMail, and I think that it looks great, many things and easy
> (bloated? IMHO no), so a Gnome Mailer similar will be really cool. It uses
> XForms, I think.
> 
> Lot of ppl, from new to middle users will like it (power users that like a
> GUI, too, otherwise they will use a text based one like Emacs one).
> 
> Problem: license, it is nor BSD neither GNU, just a "free for non commercial
> uses, ask for commercial uses".
> Solutions: ask the authors to change the license (enabling a port to GTK) or
> create one similar from scratch.

Actually (as I can see from the software map) there is Balsa. it looks
nice.


Gianluca


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