Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Jolly Roger Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm Subject: Re: Newsreaders Date: 28 Mar 2015 20:36:57 GMT Organization: People for the Ethical Treatment of Pirates Lines: 67 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net fYXk6cWBTgLWCvgBdFkHXwjRpe8gUVo/horjQPh19ui3QYye+Q Cancel-Lock: sha1:glTn4VQsK1J3Mkn62sWmXF9kJEw= X-Face: _.g>n!a$f3/H3jA]>9pN55*5<`}Tud57>1Y%b|b-Y~()~\t,LZ3e up1/bO{=-) User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Darwin) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.comm:2569 On 2015-03-28, Doc O'Leary wrote: > For your reference, records indicate that > "M. John Matlaw" wrote: > >> Plus the MacOS version is 0.9.9-1 where >> http://www.jedsoft.org/snapshots/ page shows slrn-pre1.0.3-1.tar.gz and >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/slrn/files/ shows slrn-1.0.1.tar.gz . > > The MacPorts version appears to be the 1.0.1 stable build: > > https://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/dports/news/slrn/Portfile > >> I'm just wondering whether someone with very limited, decades old >> programming experience could dl the source code, a compiler, other tools >> (version 2 of S-Lang and its "development" files?) and get a usable >> newsreader. > > You probably could. But even as someone who *is* all up-to-date with > development tools, I can tell you that it just isn’t worth the bother. Why is that? It's a *very* simple compile. > Even MacPorts I don’t find useful, because I don’t trust Apple not to > pull the rug out from under the software it installs. That's a concern even with Mac GUi software though. The biggest issue I have with MacPorts is the overhead. Most of the *nix software I need is easily compiled stand-alone without a package manager like MacPorts. > The easiest thing to do for most non-Mac and “legacy” software is to > run it in a VM like VirtualBox so that it has the full environment it was > developed for. That would be extreme overkill. You'd need more storage space, more memory, and lots of CPU overhead to do that. Theres no need to run an entire virtual machine with an entire guest operating system just to run slrn, because slrn is developed for Mac OS X, which is why it compiles quite nicely in Mac OS X. > That way, if I wanted a recent slrn or any of the other > command line newsreaders, it’s just an apt-get away for me. One of the great things about OS X is it's ability to run most *nix software *without* having to run Linux. You get the great user experience of OS X combine with the command-line environment of Unix. No need for Linux at all. > There’s even some chance I could run MT-NW if I tracked down a copy of > Mac OS X Server to put on a VM. But Usenet is not the main reason I > would bother to do that. Now *that's* something I wouldn't consider to be worth the effort. >> Thing is it looks pretty stable. And supported. > > Nothing about Usenet is properly supported any longer. I used to like > slrn back in the day, but now that I’ve looked through the source code > it makes me ill to think about using it. Any stability you see is an > artifact of it’s long history, not of design. All that matters to me is slrn works very well in OS X. -- E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter. I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead. JR