Newsreader (Skim), Balsa and LZW (Re: Mix of Ideas ...)

[famrom ran es (Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero)]

>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). "

Sounds like Free Agent for Windoze.

>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.

The point was to share news. One big database with all the full list of
newsgroups, some headers (entire group) and some articles.
Every user has a config file where to set what is "read" / "unread",
"replied", "forwarded" and such info.

One database of groups/headers/articles, many user configs.
Thats the why I speak about lock to some articles, if one or more users want
to keep an article, they can without copying files.
Only root/admin users can be override locks.

The manager app handles request form users to download and keep things.
Something like a tipical news server but with a very "on demand" approach,
instead one that gets all news.

Client and server should be separated? Or work as thight team? Dunno, coders
decide.

>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.

Last time I heard about LZW rights, it was something "free of charge apps do
not need to pay", correct?

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

But XFMail is already working, with lots of features. Just thinking about
reusing code, if XFMail authors accept to change license to one described a
free (Debian has some docs about what licenses are considered free and what
are not, if my memory does not fail).

GSR