This file will aquaint you with the user-visible changes in trn 3.0. See the discussion of the -a option and the 't' command (newsgroup selection level), and the 'T' command (article level & in kill files) for slight incompatibilities between trn 2.5 and trn 3.0. Changes from trn 3.1 to trn 3.2: o Configure and the include file structure has been improved to install easier on more systems. o Fixed some non-portable test statements in Pnews. o Added the -Z option to allow you to turn on/off support for the two different database formats (-Zt, -Zo, -Zot, or +Z). o Configure now allows you set the default database support to thread files, overview files, both or none. o Trn and its support scripts handle ~/dirs in the newslib or rnlib better. o Various bug fixes. Changes from trn 3.0 to trn 3.1: o Added a new header-searching syntax: /string/Hheader:cmd. This allows you to match a string on any header that trn knows about and is faster on the NNTP side than full-header matching. Example: /: .../Hlines:j would junk all postings longer than 99 lines. o Two new commands can be put into a group's kill file: *j (kill all articles from THRU to the end of the group) and *X (kill all unselected articles from THRU to the end of the group). o Pnews (using artcheck) now checks the active file as well as the newsgroups file for each group on the Newsgroups line. This lets you know whenever you specify a group that doesn't exist. Also, the NNTP version has been fixed to provide full checking. o Pnews/Rnmail have been modified to allow you to type either upper or lower case for the response letters, and use "sp*ell" in addition to "c*heck" for the spelling checker ("s*end" is unchanged). o Pnews/Rnmail each have a pre-edit signature appending option. If you use the file DOTDIR/.news_sig INSTEAD of .signature Pnews will append your signature before you edit the file. Rnmail uses the file DOTDIR/.mail_sig. Note also that the names may be customized with the environment variables NEWSSIGNATURE and MAILSIGNATURE, if desired (allowing a per-group signature). o Added the modifiers '>' and ')' to interpreted strings. For example: %>f gives you the address only on the From line, while %)f gives you the real name portion. o Added the 'O' command (newsgroup level) that works just like 'o' except that it does not visit empty groups. o The killfile is fully saved before manual editing with Ctrl-K (message-id commands used to be saved only on exit from the group). o The screen is now refreshed when the window size changes. o Trn now makes use of stdlib.h, unistd.h (if available) and does a more intelligent inclusion of time.h & sys/time.h (as needed). o Trn doesn't loop through the current thread if unread articles still exist in it. Also fixed various problems with '>' & 'P'. o The 'D' command in the selector no longer jumps back to the top. o The NNTP version has a different new-article aquisition strategy. Your nntp server must send up-to-date information in response to the GROUP command (INN's nnrpd does) for a group to expand while you're in it. Also, you can now set the minimum time for trn to wait (see -z) before it refetches the active file at the end of the newsgroups. The default is 5 minutes. o Optional metamail support pauses between the headers and the metamail-interpreted article. Also, the 'v' command displays the raw article without metamail processing. o Numerous portability changes and bug fixes. Changes from trn 2.5 to trn 3.0: o Trn is now capable of reading more news database formats. It currently supports news overview (.overview files), mthreads (.thread files), and direct threading of the articles. The NNTP version supports the XTHREAD and XOVER NNTP extensions. If you compile trn with support for both formats it will figure out which groups (or which server) has which type of data and act accordingly. o Mthreads is now a separate package from trn since not everyone will need to use it. Look for it in the same place you found trn. o Trn attempts to build some useful default macros for your terminal's arrow keys. On the article level they move around in the thread; in the selector they change pages (left/right) and switch selections (up/down); on the newsgroup level they move by group (up/down) and enter a group (right). If you don't like this, turn it off with the +A option. o There's a new search scope -- the from line. For example: use /author/f+ to search for and select 'author's articles. o The thread selector has been extended to be a subject and article selector. Use the 'S'et selector command to change modes or use '=' to toggle between the article selector and the subject/thread selector (whichever was last in use). o The selector can now be sorted in a variety of ways: by date, subject, author, article count (in the subject/thread selector), or a combination of subject and date (in the article selector). The default is date order of the oldest unread article in a thread. Use the 'O'rder command to pick a new one or use 'R' to reverse the sort. See also the "-O" option to set your favorite mode and order. You can even put a "&-Oas" command (for example) into a group's kill file to set a per-group default. o The selector allows you to exclude all the non-selected articles from the display (i.e. narrow it) -- use 'E' to toggle this mode. o The selector has two new selection commands: '*' is used to select (or deselect) the current item and all other items with the same subject (useful in the article selector); '#' is used to make an overriding selection that immediately reads the current item ignoring all other selections. o You can now type 'M' in the selector to mark the current item's articles as read-but-returning and press 'Y' to yank back and select these articles before exiting the group. o Selections via searches are article-oriented (/subj/+) or thread-/subject-oriented (/subj/++). The article selector's default command is "+", while the thread/subject selector's is "++". In other words doing a "/subj" search with no specified command selects whatever type of object you're looking at in the selector. o If you specify the "-p" option, your postings and any replies to them are auto-selected whenever trn encounters them. o The '+' command in a non-threaded group visits the subject selector. You can also use "_a", "_s", "_t" or "_T" to force the article, subject, thread, or thread-but-I'll-settle-for-subject selector. o The selector displays subjects/threads that are partially-selected with a '*'. Fully-selected items are marked with a '+', as before. Use the article selector (possibly with 'E'xclusive set) to see which articles are selected in a partially-selected group (or just read them). o The selector remembers which subjects you selected (and didn't kill) and marks any newly-arriving articles in these subjects as selected until you exit the group. o The medium display mode of the thread selector has been improved to make it more readable. o The selector will leave out the middle portion of a subject that is too long to display the last two words of the subject. If you don't like this, use the -u option to leave them unbroken. o 'T'hread KILL commands now use message-ids to either junk or select articles. The 'T' command has been extended to be more flexible on the article level and has been added to the selector. o Another new command 'A'dds selection or kill commands to the KILL file, and works from both the article level and the selector. o The tree display has been updated to display unread-but-not- selected articles as . Other unread articles are still [x], while read articles still display as (x). o Trn can enter a group without thread information available and thread it in the background while you read. Articles that have references that may or may not exist show up as "(?)". If you visit an article like this and wait there, the screen will update when we know for sure one way or the other (after processing more of the group). o The -a option is used to tell trn to thread all of the articles on entry to the group. If you don't specify this option a group may have a few (or many) articles that get threaded in the background and won't show up on the tree display until trn processes them. o Pressing "_+" on the article level will select the entire thread associated with the current article -- useful if you've selected individual articles and wish to read the rest of the discussion. Use "_-" to deselect the current thread. o The commands _N and _P move to the next and previous article in numberical (arrival) order (article level). Thus, you can use the command "._P" on the newsgroup level to start reading a group from the very last article to arrive. o The 't' command on the newsgroup level now turns OFF reading a group with threads (this setting is stored in the .newsrc file, so it is remembered from session to session). Trn 2.x used this to force threading to be turned ON, but it wasn't usually needed for normal operation. To temporarily turn threads on once inside a non-threaded group, use the 't' or "_t" commands (article level) or the "St" command (selector). o Trn now checks for the environment variable TRNMACRO on startup (which defaults to DOTDIR/.trnmac) before checking for the usual RNMACRO (DOTDIR/.rnmac) file. If you're running trn in its rn- compatible mode, only RNMACRO is tried. o The threaded and non-threaded data in a group has been unified, resulting in more cached information on the non-threaded side (such as the from line) and more efficient handling of missing articles, just to name two benefits. o The newsgroup information is freed when we enter a new group, not when we exit the current group. This means that if you quit out of a group (even accidentally), you can go back in and everything is still there except the selections, which get cleared on group exit. o KILL file processing will now ignore the THRU line as much as possible without slowing down the handling of KILL files. If you have really slow searches (header or article searches) or you use trn without a database it will use the THRU line to only search an article one time (as it would in rn). This means that if you have subject-oriented selection commands you don't have to worry about missing articles if you don't read all of them the first time you enter a group after they arrive. This also means that you won't have to edit your local kill file to remove the THRU line to force a re-scan -- this is now unnecessary. o Header parsing is now done in-memory, making threading and caching of articles much faster. This especially helps out NNTP users because trn used to write a tmp file for every header parse. o Several new mode letters (accessed by %m in macros) were added. The most significant are 'f' for the end (Finis) of the newsgroup selection level (instead of 'n') and 'e' for the end of the article reading level (instead of 'a'). o A new % modifier has been introduced: "%:FMTx". This allows you to apply a printf-style column format to a regular %x expansion. For example, %:-50.50s would left-justify the subject into 50 characters, exactly. o The -f option will make trn go a little faster by getting rid of the delay/prompt after kill file processing, printing the "skipping article" message, and printing the "Depositing KILL command" message. This is the default if -t (terse) is specified, but can be overriden by specifying +f after the -t option. o A new option for the gadget-conscious (-B) displays a spinner when trn is processing articles in the background. o Added the -G option to make the newsgroup 'g'o command look for near matches (for those typing mistakes). o New newsgroups that are left unsubscribed are not appended to the .newsrc unless you use the -I option or you're running an NNTP version that does not use the NEWGROUPS code. o Support for metamail's mime handling is now built into the code -- see the METAMAIL define in common.h. o Pnews does more checking of your article before posting, has a spelling-check option, and allows the Cc: header to be used to send mail while posting the article. Changes from trn 1.0.3 to trn 2.5: o Added the '(' and ')' commands (article level) to move to an article's previous/next sibling, including "cousin" siblings. o The 'A'bandon command (newsgroup level) forgets all changes to the current newsgroup since you first started trn. o The thread selector now allows you type type 'c'/'y' to catchup the group without chasing cross-references. o Added 'z' and 'Z' commands (article level) supersede the current article ('Z' also including the original text). o The g command (newsgroup level) will go to a newsgroup by number where the the number corresponds to that shown in the 'L'ist command. o Added the "-o" option to use the old method of junking articles in the thread commands (they didn't chase cross-references in trn 1.x) o Added the "-b" option to read articles in a breadth-first descent of the article tree. You can specify this command at runtime to switch from breadth-first (type "&-b") to depth-first ("&+b). o Added the "-j" option to tell trn to pass control characters through the pager unharmed.