1 Trn Kit, Version 3.5 2 3 Copyright (c) 1993, Wayne Davison 4 5 Based on rn, Version 4.4 6 7 Copyright (c) 1985, Larry Wall 8 Copyright (c) 1991, Stan Barber 9 10You may copy the trn kit in whole or in part as long as you don't try to 11make money off it, or pretend that you wrote it. 12-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 14See the file INSTALL for installation instructions. Failure to do so 15may void your warranty. :-) 16 17After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed 18in MANIFEST (Configure checks this for you). 19 20If you're unsure if you have the latest release, check ftp.uu.net: 21 22 ftp.uu.net:networking/news/readers/trn/trn.tar.gz -> [latest.version].gz 23 24[A .Z version is also available and mthreads resides in the same spot, 25if you need it.] 26 27What is trn? 28------------ 29Trn is Threaded RN -- a newsreader that uses an article's references to 30order the discussions in a very natural, reply-ordered sequence called 31threads. Having the replies associated with their parent articles not 32only makes following the discussion easier, but also makes it easy to back- 33track and (re-)read a specific discussion from the beginning. Trn also 34has a visual representation of the current thread in the upper right corner 35of the header, which will give you a feel for how the discussion is going 36and how the current article is related to the last one you read. 37 38In addition, a thread selector makes it easy to browse through a large 39group looking for interesting articles. You can even browse through the 40articles you've already read and select the one(s) you wish to read again. 41Other nice features include the extract commands for the source and binary 42groups, thread-oriented kill directives, a better newgroup finding strategy, 43and lots more. See the file NEW for a list of the things that are new to 44trn 3.0 from previous versions. 45 46To make trn work faster you will probably want to create an auxiliary news 47database that summarises the available articles. Trn know how to use two 48different kinds (so far): thread files, which are maintained by the mthreads 49package and typically requires 3-5% of your newsspool size in disk storage; 50and overview files, which are maintained by INN v1.3 (or greater) or a 51modified version of C news and typically requires 8-10% of your newsspool 52size in disk storage. (Note that the space that mthreads saves you on your 53disk is paid for by a higher demand on your cpu and disks while updating 54the files.) See the package of your choice for details on how to setup 55the adjunct database, but it is not necessary to do this before trying 56out trn. 57 58Trn supports local news groups and news accessed remotely via NNTP. If you 59opt for remote access you will probably want to make the adjunct database 60available too. You can do this in a variety of way, but I recommend that 61you send the database from the server to the client via NNTP. To do this 62you either need to use INN or a modified reference NNTP -- version 1.5.11-t5 63is the latest as of this writing. See ftp.uu.net:networking/news/nntp for 64the file nntp-t5.tar.gz. This version supports the XOVER command (to send 65overview files), the XTHREAD command (to send thread files), and the XINDEX 66command (though trn doesn't support using it). The alternative is to either 67mount the disk containing your database via NFS, or build it locally. See 68the mthreads package for details on how to do this. 69 70Note that trn is based on rn, and so it does a great job of pretending to 71be rn for those people that simply don't like to change their newsreading 72habits. It is possible to install trn as both rn and trn linked together 73and have it act as both newsreaders, thus saving you the hassle of maint- 74aining two separate newsreaders. A Configuration question will ask you if 75you want trn to check its name on startup. 76 77Where to send bug reports 78------------------------- 79Mail your bug reports to Wayne Davison <davison@borland.com>. If you use 80the 'v'ersion command from the newsgroup selection level of trn you will 81be reminded of this address should you forget. 82