Short: Use to Read NetNews Cdroms from CLI V1.0 Author: Jeff_Mosher@itd.sterling.com Uploader: Jeff_Mosher itd sterling com Type: disk/cdrom Architecture: m68k-amigaos MRN Version 1.0 What is MRN? Mrn is My Read News (MRN) program. This program is designed to be used to read the News Articles found on the NetNews/CD. What is a NetNews/CD? This is a CDROM that contains about 2 weeks worth of UseNet News feed. This series of CDROMs were originally produced by Sterling Software. April 1993 the service was turned over to CD Publishing Corporation. This program was written to provide an easier way to selectively read articles found on the NetNews/CD. Mrn provides a trn/rn "like" interface to selecting articles found in the groups archived on the CD. This program was written in about 2 evenings. It seems to work just fine for me, I hope it works well enough for you. It is a very small program and does only what I needed it to do. Remember it is free. If you have constructive comments or bugs to report please contact me. If you know of any other programs that do a better job at reading these cdroms than mine, please let me know because I did not find any programs at all when I looked. That is how this program came to be. Mrn uses a text viewer like more/most/less,etc. to display each article you chose to read. This archive contains only three files: mrn - the CLI ONLY executable. mrn.cf - the configuration file for mrn. readme - the file you are now reading. The mrn.cf file contains configuration information required by mrn. You should find three entries in mrn.cf. They are the following: CDROM_PATH=cd0:spool NUM_LINES=20 VIEWER=SYS:utilities/more CDROM_PATH should be set to the cdrom device name plus the directory name "spool". NUM_LINES should be set to the number of lines in your open CLI window. VIEWER should be set to the full path of your text viewer. The mrn.cf can be placed in the same directory as the executable or in S:. To run mrn, open a CLI window and type the following at the CLI prompt: mrn NewsDirectory where NewsDirectory is the News group directory which contains the articles you wish to read. For Example: mrn alt/fan/davebar this would present you with a list of articles from the Dave Barry newsgroup found under cd0:spool/alt/fan/davebar. Example screen follows: Article list: (Enter 'Q' to quit, Press RETURN to read articles) a Darrin P Cardani - Re: Clari e-mail troubles b Michael Steele - Frequently Asked Questions (Monthly Posting) c+ Philip Hallstrom - So is DB left-handed? d Blackelmo - Clari e-mail troubles e Dave Johnson - Re: Clari e-mail troubles f+ A. Ioannides - Re: Life in the Limelight. g Helen Trillian Rose - Re: Clari e-mail troubles h bhjelle@carina.unm.edu - Re: The Dave Barry Show i Paultje Bakker - Re: Life in the Limelight. j Pat Boren - Worst songs k A. Ioannides - %% Dave on TV %% l Michael Jenkinson - The Dave Barry Show m Philip Hallstrom - Dave coming to Tacoma??? n+ V. Visweswaran - Re: So is DB left-handed? o colbert@umiami.ir.miami.e - Looking for TRPOIC HUNTERS! p Robert Abrams At the ">" prompt you may select/unselect the articles by subject from the list by entering the alphabetic character in the left most column. A '+' sign will appear by selected articles (see example screen above). You may unselect an article by re-entering the selection character. After selecting one or more of the articles, you may read the selected articles by pressing the return key. You favorite text viewer will start up with the selected article. When you exit your text viewer, the next selected article will appear. When there are no more articles selected to read, the list of articles will be updated to contain only articles you have not read during this instance of the mrn program. If you wish to Quit the program, type a 'Q' (uppercase Q). The idea is to make all of your article selections, then press return and read them. Legal Stuff: Mrn is copyrighted freeware. It may be distributed freely as long as no modifications are made to the executable and this document. A nominal fee may be asked to cover distribution costs. Mrn may not be used for any commercial purposes or included with any commercial product without the written permission of the author. No responsibilities are taken for damaged equipment, lost data, Amigas or any other components or data involved while using Mrn. You can reach me the following ways: Internet: Jeff_Mosher@itd.sterling.com Snail Mail: Jeff Mosher 6041 South 44th St. Omaha, NE 68107 Please drop me a note if you find this program useful or have bugs to report or suggestions to make. If enough interest is shown, I might be persuaded to release additional versions. If you know of ANY programs that accomplish this same task, please drop me a note. I would like to try them out.