Re: Newsreader: Best of the bunch?

[marc <gmane@auxbuss.com>]

Paul Smith said...
> %% marc <gmane@auxbuss.com> writes:
> 
>   m> Next, I look everywhere to try to discover how I can see the sorted
>   m> list of available ngs and I try to find a relevant part of the docs
>   m> that might help. All I want to do is sub to a group and fiddle
>   m> about, but I can't even find the list of ngs? L just gives me the
>   m> aforementioned two.
> 
> Interesting; usually some basic newsgroups are automatically
> subscribed.  Maybe the Debian install disables that.

I think that the gnus install assumes that you are attaching to a 
regular usenet host, rather than gmane, in this case, so its starter ngs 
are absent.

> Go to Groups -> Listing -> List zombie groups to see all the possible
> groups (or "A z").  You can subscribe what you want (use "u" to toggle
> subscription) and kill the rest of the zombies (Groups -> Subscribe ->
> Kill all zombie groups).

I found them eventually - although I did a reinstall in between. Then  I 
tried to add another usenet server, and became lost again. Perhaps, in 
the long term, emacs+gnus is worth a go, but the initial learning curve 
is far too steep when all I want to do is find a decent newsreader.

While all the newsreaders offer basic functionality, I can't find one 
that approaches Gravity in terms of ease of use and depth of 
functionality. Pan looks close at first glance, but lacks purging and 
article retention - and, therefore, article retention after purging, and 
per group purge overrides. Pan also lacks scoring - it has a very, very 
basic go at this - and has very limited configuration.

Knode has purging, but no article retention after purging, and per group 
purge overrides. In fact, it automatically deletes expired articles 
locally - as far as I can tell - which makes it of no use at all to me.

What I mean by "article retention after purging" is that articles can be 
marked to be retained indefinitely, regardless of whether the group (or 
all groups) are purged.

By "per group purge overrides", I mean that the global purge policy can 
be overridden for each subscribe ng. For example, you might want to keep 
an archive locally - perhaps purging it once a year.

Next on my list is to try running Gravity under Wine, but I'm not too 
hopeful.

-- 
Best,
Marc