1
2    This is Pan, a powerful and user-friendly Usenet newsreader for GTK+.
3    The latest information and versions of Pan can always be found at
4    <http://pan.rebelbase.com/>.
5
6
7THE SALES PITCH
8
9    Pan is good for Reading News.
10
11        * Pan is the only Unix newsreader to score 100% on the
12          Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval newsreader evaluations.
13        * Pan has keyboard bindings for mouse-free newsreading.
14        * Basic newsreader features, such as reading and writing news,
15          threading articles, and replying via email, are supported.
16        * Articles can be sorted by author, date, subject, or the number
17          of unread children in the thread.
18        * Multiple connections are supported, so articles can be read
19          while binaries are downloading.
20        * Articles can be filtered by regular expression matching,
21          read/unread state, binary/text, etc.
22        * Works well as an offline reader.
23        * Articles can be queued until you want to go online, and can be
24          re-edited at any point before they're posted.
25        * A flexible rules system allows you to delete, hide, download,
26          or notify you of, etc. articles that match a subject, or are
27          posted by a particular user, and so on.
28        * The same system can be used to define automatic actions on behalf
29          of the user: auto-download, auto-cache, auto-delete etc.
30        * Groups can be filtered by regular expression matching
31          subscribed/new/all, etc.
32
33    Pan is good at Binaries.
34
35        * Attached images can be shown inline.
36        * Pan can download and thread articles as quickly as bandwidth allows.
37        * uuencode, MIME, and yEnc attachments are all supported.
38        * A task manager lets you reorder, cancel, and resubmit download tasks.
39        * Multiple connections are supported, so many binaries can
40          be downloaded simultaneously.
41        * Multipart articles are automatically grouped together.
42        * Non-binary, incomplete multipart, and saved messages can be filtered
43          out of the article list.
44        * Files can be attached to a Usenet article and are
45          automatically encrypted with yEnc, threaded and referenced by Pan.
46        * Articles can be encrypted or signed with a public or private PGP key
47          for enhanced privacy and security.
48        * Connections can be encrypted with the TLS protocol.
49
50    The rest of the sales pitch is at <http://pan.rebelbase.com/features/>.
51
52
53RELEASE NOTES
54
55        * You are advised to back up your $PAN_HOME directory (by default,
56          '$HOME/.pan2') before upgrading Pan.
57
58        * If you have previously been using a localhost server with stunnel and
59          you now want to connect directly to a news server using the actual
60          server address, do not create a new configuration entry for the
61          server. Pan treats a new entry as a new server and does not preserve
62          existing data on your subscribed groups, even though you are
63          connecting to the very same server as before. Always edit the existing
64          server configuration to preserve your subscriptions.
65
66        * Directories to search for SSL certificates can be defined with
67          environment variables 'SSL_CERT_DIR' or 'SSL_DIR'.
68
69        * To use password storage provided by GNOME Keyring or libsecret, build
70          Pan with support for that feature, and then enable it in Edit ->
71          Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> 'Save passwords in password storage'.
72
73
74REQUIREMENTS
75
76    Pan requires these libraries:
77
78        * GLib 2.17.6 or higher <http://developer.gnome.org/glib/>
79          (optionally GLib 2.26.0 or higher to support multiple Pan instances)
80
81        * GTK+ 2.16.0 or higher (optionally GTK+ 3.0.0 or higher)
82          <http://www.gtk.org/>
83
84        * GMime 2.6.20 or higher <http://spruce.sourceforge.net/gmime/>
85          (optionally with PGP cryptography support)
86
87    The following libraries add extra features but are optional:
88
89        * GtkSpell 2.0.7 or higher for spellchecker support
90          <http://gtkspell.sourceforge.net>
91          (GtkSpell 2.0.16 or higher when using GTK+ 3)
92
93        * Enchant 1.6.0 or higher for spellchecker support
94          <http://www.abisource.com/projects/enchant/>
95
96        * libnotify 0.4.1 or higher for notifications
97          <http://www.galago-project.org/news/index.php>
98
99        * GNOME Keyring 3.2.0 or higher for password storage
100          <https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring>
101
102        * libsecret 0.16 or higher and gcr 3.20 or higher for password storage
103          when using GTK+ 3 <https://developer.gnome.org/libsecret/>
104          <https://developer.gnome.org/gcr/>
105
106        * D-Bus to support running multiple Pan instances
107          <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus>
108
109        * GnuTLS 3.0.0 or higher for encrypted connections (TLS 1.x)
110          <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/>
111
112        * Yelp Tools for built-in user manual
113          <https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Yelp/Tools>
114
115    The following libraries are experimental and not suitable for any use other
116    than testing. Use at your own risk:
117
118        * GMime 3.0.0 or higher <http://spruce.sourceforge.net/gmime/>
119          (optionally with PGP cryptography support)
120
121        * WebKitGTK+ 1.8.1 or higher for embedded HTML
122          <https://webkitgtk.org/>
123
124    Run the following command to get a list of all options that you can enable
125    or disable at configure time:
126
127    ./configure --help
128
129
130INSTALLATION
131
132    Run the following command to build Pan configured with the default options:
133
134    ./configure && make
135
136    This will result in the executable ./pan/gui/pan.
137
138    When building Pan from the Git repository, run the following command
139    instead:
140
141    ./autogen.sh && make
142
143    Finally, run the following command as root to install Pan:
144
145    make install
146
147
148UPGRADING
149
150    Upgrading typically requires that you do the exact same procedure as when
151    installing Pan.
152
153
154HOW TO REPORT BUGS
155
156    For details on how to report bugs, see <http://pan.rebelbase.com/bugs/>.
157
158
159CONTACT
160
161    To get in touch with Pan contributors and community members, subscribe to
162    one of the Pan mailing lists. For more information, see
163    <http://pan.rebelbase.com/mailing_lists/>.
164
165    You can also chat with other community members on irc.freenode.net, channel
166    #pan.
167
168
169LINKS
170
171    Pan     : http://pan.rebelbase.com/
172    GTK+    : http://www.gtk.org/
173    GNOME   : http://www.gnome.org/
174    GNU     : http://www.gnu.org/
175
176
177