1 Trn Kit, Version 4.0 2 3 Copyright (c) 1995, 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 change-log for a list of the things that are new to 44trn 4.0 from previous versions (either view the file HelpFiles/changelog 45or type 'h' (help) from inside trn and select the "What's New?" entry). 46 47To make trn work faster you will probably want to create an auxiliary news 48database that summarises the available articles. Trn know how to use two 49different kinds (so far): thread files, which are maintained by the mthreads 50package and typically requires 3-5% of your newsspool size in disk storage; 51and overview files, which are maintained by INN v1.3 (or greater) or a 52modified version of C news and typically requires 8-10% of your newsspool 53size in disk storage. (Note that the space that mthreads saves you on your 54disk is paid for by a higher demand on your cpu and disks while updating 55the files.) See the package of your choice for details on how to setup 56the adjunct database, but it is not necessary to do this before trying 57out trn. 58 59Trn supports local news groups and news accessed remotely via NNTP. If you 60opt for remote access you will probably want to make the adjunct database 61available too. You can do this in a variety of way, but I recommend that 62you send the database from the server to the client via NNTP. To do this 63you either need to use INN or a modified reference NNTP -- version 1.5.11-t5 64is the latest as of this writing. See ftp.uu.net:networking/news/nntp for 65the file nntp-t5.tar.gz. This version supports the XOVER command (to send 66overview files), the XTHREAD command (to send thread files), and the XINDEX 67command (though trn doesn't support using it). The alternative is to either 68mount the disk containing your database via NFS, or build it locally. See 69the mthreads package for details on how to do this. 70 71Note that trn is based on rn, and so it does a great job of pretending to 72be rn for those people that simply don't like to change their newsreading 73habits. It is possible to install trn as both rn and trn linked together 74and have it act as both newsreaders, thus saving you the hassle of maint- 75aining two separate newsreaders. A Configuration question will ask you if 76you want trn to check its name on startup. 77 78Where to send bug reports 79------------------------- 80Mail your bug reports to trn-workers@lists.sourceforge.net. Use the 81'v'ersion command from the newsgroup selection level of trn to be 82reminded of this address and see some configuration information to 83send along with your bug report. 84