
This is to announce the release of:

	      SnarfNews 1.4 - a USENET Transport Toolkit

Available from: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~crypto/

The attached is taken from the README; improvements include:

*  New "streaming" article fetch mode, implemented via new commands
  "nntpmsgids" and "gronkmsgids"; the former acts like "gronknntp" and
  produces a list of new message-ids to stdout.  The latter reads
  message-ids from stdin and fetches them via NNTP, with a user-specified
  ability to queue multiple fetch requests.

  The net effect is: higher network utilisation and less time spent
  with your modem connected.

* "gronknntp" config files have moved into $SNARFCONF/sites

* "gronknntp" extra tabbing to make "bad group" messages stand out more.

* "filterart" and "filterbatch" can have feed-specific config files,
   so you can edit out traffic you don't want with more control

Followups directed to news.software.nntp.

	- alec

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SnarfNews - USENET Transport Toolkit
by Alec Muffett

WWW: http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~crypto/

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Introduction

SnarfNews is a toolbox of utilities written mostly in Perl5 (with some shell
scripts), designed to help people manipulate USENET News traffic in useful
ways.

SnarfNews was initially written (back in 1990) in order to provide a
compressed, ASCII-fied USENET feed of a selection of newsgroups to a home
machine (an Amiga A500); the original project included a minimal NNTP server
and article-handling system, but that has since been dropped in favour of
INN on Linux, although it may be reborn one day if I have enough time.

Things you can do with SnarfNews, include:

   * Fetch news articles (by newsgroup) from multiple NNTP servers and
     inject them into a local news-spool via "rnews", "inews", POST or
     IHAVE.

   * Top-up your main newsfeed with articles from groups that you normally
     wouldn't get, by snarfing them from another server. This can be useful
     for receiving (eg:) local or national groups with poor propagation.

   * Put articles from a local NNTP server to a remote one, via NNTP's IHAVE
     or POST commands.

   * Gate e-mail lists into newsgroups. (preserves MIME attachments)

   * Gate newsgroups into e-mail lists. (preserves MIME attachments)

   * Automatically e-mail to yourself, articles that appear in specific
     newsgroups on an NNTP server.

   * Automatically save to disk any articles that are posted to a list of
     newsgroups on an NNTP server, for archiving or off-line news reading.

   * Transparently repost articles from one newsgroup on one NNTP server to
     another newsgroup on another NNTP server.

   * Collect articles from a NNTP server, batch and compress them, and
     e-mail them to a remote server for unbatching and injection into
     another newsfeed. (requires gzip)

   * Implement encrypted newsfeeds via batching/e-mail. (requires PGP 2.6.2
     or above)

   * Sanitise batched newsfeeds by removing excessively cross-posted
     articles, excessively large articles, "MAKE MONEY FAST", and other
     spams.

   * Inject traditional "rnews" batches into NNTP-only News servers, by
     translating them into individual IHAVE or POST commands.

   * Pull/push news through a SOCKS firewall. (requires "runsocks")

   * Implement "streaming" retreival of USENET articles, maximising
     utilisation of your network bandwidth and reducing connection time.

   * Enjoy automatic fall-back into RFC-977 compatability; ie: the software
     attempts to use common but non-standard NNTP etentions for speed, and
     falls back to stock NNTP commands if they fail.

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Requirements

Things you will need to run SnarfNews include:

   * Access to a NNTP News server, preferably running INN.
   * perl5 (mandatory)
   * gzip (for compressed news batches)
   * pgp 2.6.2 or above (for encrypted news batches)
   * SOCKS software (for transport through SOCKS firewalls)

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		    alec muffett, oxford, england
    please reply to: alecm @ crypto.dircon.co.uk (without spaces)
		http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~crypto/
