| Guido van Rossum | b25c402 | 1994-05-27 13:32:41 +0000 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | NEWSLIST |
| 2 | ======== |
| 3 | A program to assist HTTP browsing of newsgroups |
| 4 | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| 5 | |
| 6 | WWW browsers such as NCSA Mosaic allow the user to read newsgroup |
| 7 | articles by specifying the group name in a URL eg 'news:comp.answers'. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | To browse through many groups, though, (and there are several thousand |
| 10 | of them) you really need a page or pages containing links to all the |
| 11 | groups. There are some good ones out there, for example, |
| 12 | |
| 13 | http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/News/Groups/Overview.html |
| 14 | |
| 15 | is the standard one at CERN, but it only shows the groups available there, |
| 16 | which may be rather different from those available on your machine. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Newslist is a program which creates a hierarchy of pages for you based |
| 19 | on the groups available from YOUR server. It is written in python - a |
| 20 | splendid interpreted object-oriented language which I suggest you get |
| 21 | right now from the directory /pub/python at ftp.cwi.nl, if you haven't |
| 22 | already got it. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | You should be able to see some sample output by looking at: |
| 25 | http://pelican.cl.cam.ac.uk/newspage/root.html |
| 26 | |
| 27 | Descriptions of newsgroups can be added from a file with one group |
| 28 | per line. eg: |
| 29 | |
| 30 | alt.foo Articles about foo |
| 31 | comp.bar Programming in 'bar' and related languages |
| 32 | |
| 33 | A suitable list detailing most groups can be found at ftp.uu.net in |
| 34 | /uunet-info/newsgroups.gz. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Make sure you read the information at the beginning of the program source and |
| 37 | configure the variables before running. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | In addition to python, you need: |
| 40 | |
| 41 | An NNTP-based news feed. |
| 42 | A directory in which to put the pages. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | The programming is not very beautiful, but it works! It comes with no |
| 45 | warranty, express or implied, but with the hope that some others may |
| 46 | find it useful. |
| 47 | |
| 48 | Comments, improvements & suggestions welcomed. |
| 49 | Quentin Stafford-Fraser |
| 50 | |
| 51 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 52 | Quentin Stafford-Fraser |
| 53 | http://pelican.cl.cam.ac.uk/people/qs101/me.html |
| 54 | |
| 55 | Cambridge University Computer Lab Rank Xerox Cambridge EuroPARC |
| 56 | qs101@cl.cam.ac.uk fraser@europarc.xerox.com |
| 57 | Tel: +44 223 334411 Tel: +44 223 341521 |
| 58 | Fax: +44 223 334679 Fax: +44 223 341510 |
| 59 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |