Re: Gnus or Slrn for newsreader?
mike polniak wrote:
> I have been using Pan as my newsreader. Its really not bad. Very
> easy to set up and use the gui.But i plan to try Gnus or Slrn.
> Any comments about either in terms of ease of setup/use, features
> and basically is either one worth the effort compared to Pan.
I absolutely love mutt (proving that I don't mind console programs), and
I absolutely hate slrn. It's interface is terribly awkward.
Slrn's biggest problem is that it doesn't cache any articles or headers,
so it can't easily display certain articles read in past slrn sessions.
My method of choice for viewing articles in most newsreaders is to view
all the articles in threads that contain unread articles. This lets
me ignore inactive threads while also providing complete context for
the articles that I'm about to read, just by glancing at the thread
tree. Slrn can't do that (easily). This is especially troublesome in
moderated newsgroups (try alt.atheism.moderated), because each new batch
of articles only contains responses to the previous batch, and therefore
each thread is completely flat if you've already read the previous batch
of articles. You have to actually view each and every article just to
know who's responding to whom. And you get _completely_ lost if the
article author doesn't include a quote from the article to which s/he's
responding.
It also has unintuitive and seemingly arbitrary keybindings (at least
for the hardcore mutt user) and lacks basic features in its default
configuration. For example, you can't scroll up in an article by one
line, only by one page. If you're used to scrolling down by one line
by hitting Enter and scrolling up by one line by hitting Backspace, get
ready for a jarring experience.
It also has very poor documentation.
Remember, this is all IMHO, and YMMV. I'm not trying to insult any slrn
users or developers out there.
brian
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