slrn 'versus' tin (was: Automating news downloads?)

[Note: Subject: changed.]

Rockinghorse Winner <rockinghorse@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-07-07, Frank Slootweg <this@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yet another option is to use the newsreader which I'm using, tin. tin
can download articles (for later reading (with '-R')) via a command line
option ('-S'), so it can download articles at system startup. However
tin is a CUI (Character/'Console' UI) newsreader, which is quite
different than the GUI newsreader you're used to, so this option is
probably not the preferable one.

I hope this helps.

[1] <http://www.arcorhome.de/newshamster/tgl/misc/hamster_en.html>

Frank wonder how Tin compares with Slrn for offline reading. Any opinion?
I'm happy with SLRN but wonder if maybe Tin has greater functionality

tin can do offline reading *by itself*, which (AFAIK) slrn can't, so
in that sense it has greater functionality for offline reading. However
in another response you mention that you use slrnpull. AFAIK tin offers
no real advantage over that *combination*.

slrn and tin are both great newsreaders and in general I think that a
switch from slrn to tin will not buy you much, if any, added
functionality. Of course I will deny ever having said that and this
response will self-destruct after reading! :-)

Over the years I think I have only encountered one substantial feature
which tin has and (AFAIK) slrn does not have and that is *notifying* the
user that there are 'hot' (interesting/up_scored/<whatever> articles.
I.e. like many mailers have a 'You have (new) mail!' notification
facility, tin has (sort of) a 'You have (new) (hot) News!' notification
facility.

The notification can for example [1] look like this:

....
56 unread ( 5 hot) articles in news.software.readers
....

So I know that if and when I start tin, there will be at least 5
'hot' articles in this group.

*If* you can create a *generic* score file, i.e. one which needs
hardly any maintenance, for your 'hot' articles, then you can use this
notification facility with any other newsreader which uses a 'standard'
..newsrc format file, i.e. also slrn. I.e. you use tin (only) for the
notification function and your normal newsreader for the rest.

For details, see the '-Z' and '-v' options in the tin manual
(<http://www.tin.org/bin/man.cgi?section=1&topic=tin>).

So if tin has so few advantages over slrn, why do I keep using tin?

Well I started with the first *real* News system, Notes (No not that
silly Lotus stuff, but *real* Notes (from the University of Illinois)).
But like many great inventions, Notes did not (really) survive, so I had
to switch to something else and the UI of tin is very similar to that of
Notes, so I switched to tin and never looked back (except at group
entry :-( (Notes had sub-sub-second group entry times, also for groups
of thousands and thousands of articles)).

[1] The actual notification needs a SMOSP [2] and some 'popup' or
whatever utility.

[2] Small Matter Of Shell Programming.
.

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