JNews : A Java Usenet News Reader
In my spare time, when I'm not
restoring an antique radio I've
written a Usenet news reader in Java. All that is needed to run JNews
is the Java run-time evironment Version 1.4.1 or higher available from
Sun Microsystems. JNews is supplied as a Jar file available in the
download section. The latest version is 0.3.
Features
- 100% Written in Java, will run anywhere. I've run JNews
on Solaris, Linux and Windows ME.
- Inline display of images (JPEG and GIF).
- yEnc decoding (in addition to UU and Base64 decoding).
- Retrieve and combine multipart attachments.
- Ability to use different configuration files, e.g. one for
work related stuff and another for hobbies.
Screenshots
What's New
- Added nntp authentication. Thanks to Terry Brown for
requesting and then testing this feature.
Download and Installation
The JNews application is available as a Jar file available at
http://radiohacker.org/apps/jnews.jar. Installation is as simple as
putting the .jar file in a directory that is readable by you. To run
JNews type the following at your command prompt:
[/home/craig]->$ java -jar jnews.jar
Configuration
The first time JNews is run the configuration dialog will open.
Enter your name, email address and ip address of your news server
and you are ready to go. JNews will then create a configuration
file and connect to your newsserver to get a list of available
groups. Once the list of groups is retrieved you are ready to
begin reading usenet news. Initally you will be subscribed to one
or two groups that demonstrate JNews's capabilities. Use the
Un/Subscribe button to choose a list of groups you want to read.
Customize JNews
You may customize the way JNews looks (colors, font size etc).
JNews looks in it's configuration file (the default is
~/.jnews-config) for it's settings. For example, to change the color
of the progress bar to cornflowerblue edit .jnews-config and change
the entry of progressbar to "progressbar=100 149 237". The
configuration file has comments before each parameter describing
what it applies to.
Multiple Configurations
It's easy to use multiple configurations with JNews, just copy
the two files JNews uses and pass the name of the new configuration
file to JNews on the command line. For example, copy the
configuration file (default is .jnews-config) to .jnews-config.hobby.
Then copy the groups file (default is .jnewsrc) to .jnewsrc.hobby.
Edit the configuration file to reflect the new groups file, change
the line "groupfile=/home/user/.jnewsrc" to
"groupfile=/home/user/.jnewsrc.hobby".
Then runs JNews with your new files by typing at the command prompt:
[/home/craig]->$ java -jar jnews.jar .jnews-config.hobby
Current Limitations
- Out of memory errors when reading groups with a large (ten's
of thousands) number of unread articles.
- Cannot split a large file into multiple parts for posting.
- Cannot decode certain non-standard mime-types.
Report Bugs, Comments, etc
I would like to
hear from you about what you think of JNews and of
course any bugs you find.
