MBTN
A Newsreader for the BeOS
v0.0002alpha

Version 0.0002alpha of MBTN has been released! New in this version is the ability to post, support for servers which require authentication, a spiffed-up interface, global interface optimizations, and some socket level optimizations.

For future versions, I plan to support PlugInEditors components for use in posting and mailing, mailing directly from MBTN, message filtering (kill files, maybe limited scoring capabilities), and MIME and uuencoded binary support in the form of inline image viewing using Datatypes and easy binary downloading.

You can get the current version from BeWare in a couple of days, or just grab it here.

This is the second public release of MBTN. If people find it generally useful, there will be more releases. Currently, MBTN is released as EgoWare: send me some e-mail if you're using MBTN, and let me know how you like it.

Installation

  • Untar it
  • Run setfile on it to get my fantastic icon
  • Run it
MBTN will create the directory /boot/system/news and will put it's files there. You can put the binary anywhere you want.

Using MBTN (or making a valiant effort)

MBTN takes no command-line arguments, and ignores anything you drop on it. It will bring up a Subscriptions window, which will initially be empty. Here is the general idea, with numerous editorial comments:

  1. Go to the application menu and go to Open server... and enter your server's name in the dialog which comes up. This does not have to be your "primary" server -- there is no such concept with MBTN.
  2. This will pop up a server window, which will begin to grab all of the server's groups. You don't want to open servers regularly, just when you want to add some groups to your subscription list. (You should be able to manipulate the list while the groups are still coming in. I think. Try it.)
  3. Find a group that interests you. See the keyboard shortcuts for help navigating. Clicking on one of the little pointey things will open/close a sub-hierarchy. How sickeningly Mac-like.
  4. Currently, the only way to subscribe is to drag and drop a group from the server window onto the Subscriptions window. Sorry, there are no keyboard shortcuts. There will be. Anyway, the groups will be automatically arranged in the Subscriptions window as they are dropped on it. If a group refuses to be dragged, this means it is not a real group, but rather is a proxy tree node inserted to organize the groups under it. I'm so glad the only people who have BeOS out there are developers... imagine trying to reword that for users.
  5. You can go through the same process to grab groups from other servers. As you open servers, their names are cached in the application menu for easy access. Right now, there is no way to tell which groups in the Subscriptions list are from which servers. But MBTN knows, don't worry.
  6. Once your Subscriptions list is nicely populated, double click (or press Enter) on the group that you are burning to read. (You can press Delete to get rid of groups you've changed your mind about.) You can also open a group directly from the server window. MBTN doesn't care.
  7. You can navigate the article list in the group window much like the group view in the Subscriptions or server windows.

    Articles are grouped into subject "buckets" and then threaded within those buckets. Therefore, top level entries in the article list are _not_ articles, they are thread groupings.

    READ THIS PARAGRAPH!!! Double click (or press Enter) to open a new article window. That window is now the current target for the article list. The target article window will endeavor to show the text of the currently selected article. Don't open a new article window for each new article you view unless for some reason you want to show the text of multiple articles. There will probably be an option later on to disable this behavior and use more BeNews/NewsWatcher-esque behavior.

Fun keyboard shortcut tutorial!

Key(s) Usable in Function>
Right arrow Tree views Open and enter a sub-hierarchy, or move down one entry if there are are no children of the current entry
Left arrow Tree views Close and leave the current sub-hierarchy, or move up one entry if at the top level
SHIFT-Up arrow / SHIFT-Down arrow Article list Scroll the current target article window's text
ALT-Up arrow All windows Activate the parent window (the server or Subscriptions window for group window, the group window for article windows)
ALT-Down arrow All windows Activate the "favorite" child window (parent/child is as defined above; the "favorite" child is the last active child)
ALT-Left / ALT-Right All windows Activate the left or right sibling window ("left" and "right" are arbitrary directions in the sibling list; the Subscriptions and server windows are siblings)

Random hints

The spacing of the fields (Author/Lines/Replies/Date) can be changed by clicking and dragging on the field separators in the little header bars.

Be sure to read #7 above. I've had a number of "bug" reports about this feature.

Glaring Feature Ommisions

  • I'd like to support sending mail from MBTN rather than going through BeMail
  • The article list does not show which articles are marked read
  • No support for MIME
  • Keyboard subscription
  • Aw, hell, just about everything

(Known) Bugs

  • The Subscriptions window does not show the correct number of messages read. I can't figure out how to do this without grabbing a whole lot of info from the server for each group. Anyone who knows, please drop me a line.
  • Deleting groups from the Subscriptions window works, but may leave skeleton hierarchies behind
  • The keyboard shortcuts for the main application menu (i.e. to open the subscriptions window or open servers) do not work. I still dunno why.
  • If you enter a bad server in the "Open server" window, it still shows up on the list of servers in the main menu.
  • There is no way to delete a server from the list of servers in the main menu. Other than editting the harebrained MBTN.config file.
  • Configuration file format is lame
  • It'll probably crash if you screw up the config files somehow
  • Could make more efficient use of memory while running
  • May be a bit too multi-threaded.

Notes

The per-server files in /boot/system/news are close to .newsrc format. I think. Anyway, you could easily have 'sed' convert your .newsrc if you can't bear to hit Alt-M to mark all messages read. When DR9 comes out I hope to put this suff in the database anyway, in a standard format, so that all newsreaders can talk.

I'm open to all comments, bug reports, attractive women, flames, feature requests, or wads of hundred-dollar bills you'd care to throw at me.

Copyright 1997
George Hoffman (geh7@cornell.edu)