(again) Usenet newsreader?

[Karel Jansens]

Is there anyone out there sufficiently bored to port a decent Usenet newsreader to the 770?

Pan would be nice (but probably overkill), or slrn (although I don't think that one has offline capability). It would probably be advisable not to default it to download the entire list of newsgroups of a particular server, as those lists tend to be humongous these days, but to give the user the possibility to manually enter the newsgroups he wants.

Ideal would be a combination of leafnode and slrn on the 770, or would that be too much to ask for?

[omegaone37]

"Pan" is already available... but I can't remember where I saw it.

Omega

[maxilogan]

"Pan" is already available... but I can't remember where I saw it.

Omega

Are you kidding?!? Where? Where? WHere?

Decent usenet reading would be for me a killer app (besides what we already have such as Maemo Mapper, Bloglines 770, Del.icio.us 770, Nflick etc.)

[spycedtx]

it shows up in my applications to install if you have the repository catalogs entered from http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories

[fpp]

Just installed it too. I thought it was going to be a port of a console reader (like slrn or pine) but it's actually a nice-looking GUI app...

[mpancorbo]

Pan would be nice (but probably overkill), or slrn (although I don't think that one has offline capability).

I've installed "pan" but it disappointed me (too buggy and too heavy, ~ 2Mb).

You can find it in the repositories (look in wiki at maemo.org)

[maxilogan]

I haven't my 770 with me, and won't have it for a couple of weeks (white screen...), is there any way to see this? Port homepage, someone to post screenshots etc..?

Thanks!

[Karel Jansens]

it shows up in my applications to install if you have the repository catalogs entered from http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories

I don't see it. Probably because I haven't upgraded to 2006 yet (and I won't, certainly not until at least abiword and Gnumeric are ported, and the BT keyboard works as it does under 2005).

[Karel Jansens]

I've installed "pan" but it disappointed me (too buggy and too heavy, ~ 2Mb).

You can find it in the repositories (look in wiki at maemo.org)

I can't find it.

[fpp]

If you add the first few repositories on this page :
https://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories

to your apps manager, you will find it in the list.

[Axolotl]

Does PAN really works for you?
On my 770 it starts normally, can contact the news-server, but when the server starts to get the newsgroup list, PAN will lock up and finally reboot the device.
This behaviour i can reproduce.
A shame is, that i bought the 770 as is read "newsreader" on the package. Hu, maybe i am to old-fashioned, that i understand a newsgroup-reader under "newsreader" and not a rss-reader :o

Best regards

Axolotl

[Karel Jansens]

If you add the first few repositories on this page :
https://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationRepositories

to your apps manager, you will find it in the list.

Like I said: I don't have 2006 ITOS installed yet, because too many key applications (for me) are still missing.

Anyway, I'd like to hear from more user-testers how pan is faring on the 770. What I've heard sofar isn't encouraging, mostly because I think the 770 might be a bit too light under the bonnet to run a GUI newsreader like pan.

[Axolotl]

Hmm, i don't know wether you can say the 770/2006 is too small or to slow for a GUI newsreader. Years ago i used a newsreader under Windows 3.0 with trumpet winsock on a 286/8 MHz with 1 MB of Ram and a 32 MB Harddisk. And ... it wor´ked well for those days. OK, a number of only several hundred newsgroups existet in those old days, now my server has 32xxx, but it should work.

[Karel Jansens]

can can Hmm, i don't know wether you can say the 770/2006 is too small or to slow for a GUI newsreader. Years ago i used a newsreader under Windows 3.0 with trumpet winsock on a 286/8 MHz with 1 MB of Ram and a 32 MB Harddisk. And ... it wor´ked well for those days. OK, a number of only several hundred newsgroups existet in those old days, now my server has 32xxx, but it should work.

The key issue here is "for those days". I don't think modern GUI newsreaders take into account lightweight computers like the 770.

Of course, neither do CLI newsreaders, but at least they can cope with lower specs. I don't believe pan was designed with the 770's specs in mind.

[fpp]

Hmm, i don't know wether you can say the 770/2006 is too small or to slow for a GUI newsreader. Years ago i used a newsreader under Windows 3.0 with trumpet winsock on a 286/8 MHz with 1 MB of Ram and a 32 MB Harddisk. And ... it wor´ked well for those days. OK, a number of only several hundred newsgroups existet in those old days, now my server has 32xxx, but it should work.You are right, that is not where the problem lies. I used that sort of apps in those days too :-)

The thing is, they were actually developed ON and FOR the hardware platforms of the time, taking their limitations into account -- so if it worked on the coder's machine, it would also sort of work on those of the users.

With these new portable Linux machines like the 770 and the Sharp Zaurus we have a very different situation. Because they run Linux and some mainstream GUI framework (like Qt/Qtopia and Gtk/Maemo), it is faster and thus very tempting to simply port existing desktop apps from their KDE and Gnome cousins, than to code them from scratch for the specific platform (as was the case for Psions and Palms).

Problem is, those apps were made for current desktop hardware, and generally coded in blissful oblivion of CPU cycles, RAM and disk occupation, and screen resolution. So yes, our 770 is way more powerful than that 286, and perfectly capable of running A graphic newsreader (if coded carefully with the platform in mind, as the one on the Psion 5mx was), but maybe not THIS particular newsreader retrofitted from Ubuntu...

I was first confronted with this on the Zaurus with its glacially slow ports of KDE juggernauts and their dialog boxes larger than the screen... Another good example on the 770 is the size and speed of gnuite's MaemoMapper vs the port of GPSdrive.

[Karel Jansens]

can can

The key issue here is "for those days". I don't think modern GUI newsreaders take into account lightweight computers like the 770.

Of course, neither do CLI newsreaders, but at least they can cope with lower specs. I don't believe pan was designed with the 770's specs in mind.

BTW, and completely off-topic: this was my first post to this forum actually composed on my 770, using its pathetic HWR.

And you know what? As long as one writes in English and doesn't try to actually write as one would on the Newton, it isn't so bad.

It's not good either, tho'... :rolleyes:

[fpp]

Like I said: I don't have 2006 ITOS installed yet, because too many key applications (for me) are still missing.

Oops, sorry. I was in the same situation till recently, waiting for a port of Privoxy which thankfully happened quickly enough thanks to bradb. I switched over this weekend and it's everything everyone has said about it - almost feels like a different machine...
Anyway, I'd like to hear from more user-testers how pan is faring on the 770. What I've heard sofar isn't encouraging, mostly because I think the 770 might be a bit too light under the bonnet to run a GUI newsreader like pan.
Well I gave it a 15-minute test run, and it's not all that bad.
I have never used Pan on a desktop before, so I was discovering the app on the Nokia.

First, after configuring the news server in the setup wizard, I refused to let it download the groups list.
But then, I was unable to find a way to manually add a few newsgroups by name, which is a design error for a small platform. So with some trepidation I set it loose and let it download. Like Axolotl I really thought at one time that this was going to freeze or reboot the machine (went real sluggish, app was not repainting itself etc.). But I just let it do its thing and after a while it came up with the whole list (about 47,500 groups). Maybe the swap helped :-)

Evidently it had problems with such a huge list : scrolling and searching through it was a pain. I finally subscribed to a few groups and downloaded some headers without problems. But at first when I tried to read individual articles it failed to load them (the button at lower right turns red and brings up the log viewer showing assert errors, very nice feature !).

At that point I closed down the app to check what had been written to 'disk'.
In the .pan dir I found :

- a server_name_nosub.dat file, evidently a newsrc equivalent, over 2MB,
- a similar .idx (index ?) file, over 3MB (!?)
- a .bak version of each :-)
That's over 10 MB for just one news server...

I then relaunched the app, using only the subscribed groups list, and this time had no problem going through the headers, loading and reading articles, etc. I didn't test posting/mailing but this feels like a quality app and I'm pretty sure it works well overall. With a reasonable quantity of data to manage it doesn't *feel* slow at all.

Overall I'd say the main shortcoming of Pan for the 770 is the use of nonstandard newsrc files and/or the inability to add groups manually. This makes it difficult to skip the crummy initial experience and get down to business immediately with a reasonable set of groups, at which point things get smooth enough.

Another one (very common with ported apps) is incomplete Hildonization : not-quite-maemo look and feel, partially visible dialogs, no full screen mode, a very crowded (and not optional) toolbar...

OTOH there are very nice touches : total and automatic localization (the app automatically switches to your 770's native language) ; the groups/headers/message viewer arranged as a notebook instead of panels, which makes it very usable on a small screen ; and a very complete set of features, with GNKSA compliance, which is nothing to sneeze at.

All in all the most impressive newsreader I've ever seen on a PDA-like machine. Would probably not need very much work (if done by a knowledgeable, usability-minded person) to become a very good fit for the Nokia.

[maxilogan]

the groups/headers/message viewer arranged as a notebook instead of panels, which makes it very usable on a small screen ; and a very complete set of features, with GNKSA compliance, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I'm sorry I don't have my 770 because of white screen of death :-( but I can't wait to install and test it.

Would you send us a screenshot, please? :-)

[hallgreng]

I am guessing that you are looking at a large newsgroup.
In my experience with large groups, they can take an extraordinary amount of RAM to load. Some binary groups take up 2GB+ when I load them up on my desktop -I wouldnt even want to try that on the n770.

[fpp]

If you are addressing Axolotl, it seems his problem happens at the start, before accessing any group, while initially downloading the server's list of groups.
Maybe that list is huge, with many more than the 47,500 in mine.
Maybe his tablet runs out of memory. Maybe he doesn't have a swap file.
Or maybe he runs out of storage space...

[fpp]

I'm sorry I don't have my 770 because of white screen of death :-( but I can't wait to install and test it.

Would you send us a screenshot, please? :-)
There you go - I put 'em in the Screenshots Gallery :

http://www.internettablettalk.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/106/cat/503

[Karel Jansens]

All in all the most impressive newsreader I've ever seen on a PDA-like machine. Would probably not need very much work (if done by a knowledgeable, usability-minded person) to become a very good fit for the Nokia.

I've snipped your very helpful review of ported-Pan, and I'm left with one big question:

Given that I'm not a programmer (or even a program-porter), what do I have to throw at which people to get them to turn ported-Pan into quasi-native-Pan? Money? Pizza? Bricks? :cool:

[fpp]

Well, in the details for the pan package in the apps manager you can find the email address of the maintainer. Maybe your best first move would be asking him/her ;-)

[maxilogan]

There you go - I put 'em in the Screenshots Gallery :


Thanks a lot, seem veeeery interesting.

If I wouldn't read the "Appalling Nokia Support in UK" I alreday would be hoping to try it next Tuesday (2 weeks after having left my 770 in the assistance hands) :(

Am I wrong or that's a 2005 environment? Is there any 2006 complied distribution?

[fpp]

No, it's ITOS2006 with a 2005-like theme.