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	EEP! (Easy Editor Program for .newsrc files)

	(c) 1990-1993 Paul Gillingwater <paul@actrix.co.at>     


This is EEP! version 1.8, an experimental .newsrc editor program.

It is intended to work with news readers such as ``rn'' and ``trn'', 
that create a .newsrc file in the $HOME directory of each user, in 
order to track what messages have been read by them.  A major design
objective is that it should be easy to use, even by someone who is
not familiar with other UNIX editors.  There is however a distinct
bias towards vi in some of the commands, although this is redeemed
somewhat by use of curses, which means that up and down arrows may
be used on many systems.  Another redeeming feature is the on-line
help, activated with the ``?'' key.

Note that EEP is _NOT_ intended to be called from within ``rn'' or 
``trn'' by shelling out, since it will modify the .newsrc which is 
presently on disk -- and which the newsreader may have open.

Eep was written by Paul Gillingwater <paul@actrix.co.at>.
It was initially written for Actrix Information Exchange, a 
Public Access UNIX BBS in Wellington, New Zealand.

This entire work is Copyrighted (C) 1991 by Paul Gillingwater, as
the sole original author (apart from where otherwise explicitly
acknowledged).  The source code provided is available for anyone to
use in any way, EXCEPT that you may not sell it or pretend that you
wrote it.  I would be happy if people wish to incorporate part or
all of this in some other product, as long as you acknowledge me as
original author of these parts.  If this code is to be incorporated 
into a commercial product, I request that you contact me with regard 
to licensing.

You may contact me care of:
	Actrix Information Exchange
	PO Box 11-410
	Wellington
	NEW ZEALAND

**** WARNING:  This program will modify your .newsrc file.  Please
ensure you have a safe copy of this file to prevent an unfortunate 
accident.

Revision History
================
Version 1.0  ``Warts'n'All'' version released on limited (NZ only)
distribution.  Made available via anon. FTP or UUCP from Actrix.
Sent to various people to test porting to other platforms, and
implemented on Actrix BBS since it might be useful for new users.  
Released: July 20, 1991

Version 1.1  This version records the order in which newsgroups are
found in the .newsrc file, and will maintain that order for display
and output purposes.  In addition, any newsgroups which don't yet
have any entry in the newsgroups file or newslocal will be sorted so
they appear first -- this will help find new newsgroups quickly (but
it's not a full solution).  

Version 1.2  A small but important change.  It seems that ``rn'' will
check your .newsrc for newsgroup names not present, then will try to
present you with a large list of so-called "New" newsgroups.  It
seems the only way to stop this is to leave all the unsubscribed
newsgroups in the .newsrc.  This seems somehow inelegant, but
necessary.

Version 1.3  After a long hiatus, several important bug fixes 
contributed by various net.people.  Credits follow:

Dean Roth <sysop@mixcom.com>
Paul Close <pdc@sgi.com>
Arjan de Vet <devet@win.tue.nl>

As well as bug fixes, some additional functionality:
 o Newsgroups may be indexed by number (':' command)
 o MS-DOS version developed using PDCurses
 o Compatible with the Waffle system (MS-DOS and UNIX)

Version 1.4  The list of newsgroups now has a top and bottom,
and commands to get there.  Newsgroups may be deleted from
the .newsrc with the 'd' command.  The 'd' command (delete) 
is now a toggle.

January 1993: Version 1.5:  Major new command is 'v'
for view, which will open the directory and look through
headers in articles to allow browsing subjects, keywords, 
authors, dates, etc.  Using dirent.h for directory access.

Version 1.6:  Major rewrite of initialization code to change order of
reading files.  Now the active file is read first, then the newsgroup
and newslocal files, finally the .newsrc.  Changed the 'a' command so
that it's a toggle, swapping between alphabetic sorting and the original
order from the .newsrc.   Various minor pointer arithmetic bug fixes.
A new feature is the ability to mark newsgroups with the "." key,
then move them to above the cursor position.  Note that if multiple
groups are marked then moved, they may not stay in the same relative
order because of the sorting used.

Version 1.61: minor bug fixes to avoid feeding NULL pointers to
strlen(), plus other improvements.

Version 1.7: Marking, subscribing and other actions that automatically
move the cursor will now move it in the direction of the last up or down
movement command.  Searches will also follow this direction, i.e. to
search backwards, first move up, then search.  A search for nothing
will repeat the last search (same as the 'n' command.)  EEP now looks
for and respects rn's .rnlock file, and creates its own.  The man page
is somewhat improved with an alphabetical listing of commands.

Version 1.8: To improve efficiency, I have implemented a wrapper for
malloc() that i call wallop().  This also includes a mechanism for
garbage collection at the end.  EEP! should now initialize faster.

Feeping creaturism: the 'o' command (over-board? over-done?)
will organize the list so that all subscribed newsgroups will
be moved to the top of the list.  The underlying sorting order
(alphabetic or original .newsrc order) will be retained.

For EMACS fans, EEP! now offers incremental searching with ^S or ^R.
The cursor will be positioned onto the string when found.
Thanks to Vernon C. Hoxie for this code!

New feature: use left and right arrow keys to show more or less
of the newsgroup name and description.  (Also < and > keys.)
------------------------------------------------------------
News Descriptions
=================
A major benefit of Eep is that it is intended to provide a mechanism
for selecting news groups based on more than just their name.  By
using lists provided by Gene Spafford, a brief description of each
newsgroup is presented on screen, allowing novices to make decisions
on what to read more easily.  Although both ``rn'' and ``trn'' offer
the L command to list news groups, this is unwieldy if you want to
search for specific key words in newsgroup names or descriptions.
Furthermore, Eep eliminates the necessity to actually type in the
name of a newsgroup when subscribing to it.  Simply point and play!

Eep tries to be user friendly in moving around the .newsrc file.
Experienced UNIX users will wish to use Emacs or vi to edit their
.newsrc for themselves.  Eep is intended for novice users, and is
a good addition to UNIX based BBS systems.

Other features of Eep include the ability to subscribe or unsubscribe 
to a newsgroup, delete newsgroups, and catch up on messages.  

Eep will read a list of newsgroups and descriptions from two files,
"/usr/lib/news/newsgroups" or "/usr/lib/news/newslocal".

The NEWSGROUPS file contains one line per news group.  The first
``word'' (in the UNIX sense) on the line is the newsgroup name,
separated from its description by a space or tab.  The NEWSLOCAL
file is similar in structure, and is intended to contain groups
which are purely local to your system, as well as the top level
names of all of your hierarchies, plus other names as you desire for
descriptive purposes.  

e.g.  few articles are posted in comp.unix, but it makes a great
place to hold the description for all the directories under it.

Installation
------------

This release assumes that all news files are stored on one
file system, and that the paths to the files may be safely hard
coded.  Please edit the eep.h file to change where those paths may
be on your system.

The /usr/lib/news/newsgroups should exist as a result of allowing the
checkgroups script (part of 'C' news) to run.  Alternatively, you can
create the file manually by editing the messages which are posted in 
news.announce.newusers on a regular basis by the net.god, Gene Spafford.  
You may embed comments in the file by starting the line with a ``#''.  
The /usr/lib/news/newslocal file contains your own local newsgroups 
(ones not covered by Gene's postings), or ones specific to your country.  

The format of the newsgroups and newslocal files is very simple:

news.group.name description all on one line

The first space or tab is the separator.

Edit the makefile to set your preferences for compiler, then
run ``make''.  I have tried to make the code relatively
portable.  Please send me context diffs for any changes you'd like
to suggest (or bugs, of which there are still a few).

For those with early Sun OS variants (prior to Solaris, which decided to
do SYSV properly), mattair@ds62.synercom.hounix.org (Charles Mattair) writes:

> Sun-os is mostly a BSD derivative with the
> brain dead BSD curses as its default libraries and include files.  However,
> the SYSV variant is around under /usr/5bin/... and if you link with
> /usr/5bin/cc, you automagically get SYSV curses and its associated include
> files.

Oh, and for those who are wondering: "Why call it EEP!"?.  One user
has suggested it sounds like the noise a small furry animal might make.
Check out Sol Libes' excellent book, ``Life With UNIX''.  There
is a reference in there to an aspect of UniForum conferences in New
Zealand, and the types of jokes found there.  Then consider that one
can start a command by prefixing it with the name of the shell to
execute, e.g.:
	sh eep

<baaaah!>
-----------
The ``To Do'' list:

Although I use NNTP to fetch my news, I have not incorporated any of
the hooks for NNTP in this version.  This is definitely planned, but
not for some time.  I would welcome efforts in this direction from
others.  Should EEP become a newsreader?  No, there are too many already.

The Help screen is really ugly.  

This version of eep will maintain the order of the .newsrc, except
that newsgroups not in the .newsrc will be sorted AFTER other newsgroups.

Information on a newsgroup will include the actual number of
articles found in the directory -- only upon request.  Note that
this will impact portability, since it will have to open
directories.

A later version will allow the ``!'' key to shell out to UNIX.
Because some sites will use eep from inside a BBS, this may not be
appropriate.  For that reason, the -! flag may be used to set the
no_shell boolean.

Write out file for use with dynafeed.

Some hooks are present to allow the root user to modify the
active file.  This will be a later addition, along with possible
editing of the newsgroups file to add descriptions.

One addition that has been planned since the germination of eep
has been to present the newsgroups in a hierarchical structure.
Currently there are close to 3,000 newsgroups (in New Zealand) and
this is growing fast.  Having one long list, however you scroll
through it, is not good enough for newer users.  Eventually, eep
will show an opening menu of just the top-level groups (i.e. ones
with not "." in their name).  Users will then "drill-down" to the
next level, and thus will see the hierarchy as an inverted tree.  As
a prelude to this, and taking (h) into account, it seems appropriate
to add code to take the top-level names separately, and not show
them in the main list.  

Most of the top-level names may be found in the
/usr/lib/news/distributions file, however not all.  For example,
there are some news groups which have a single name, e.g. control,
junk.  Should these be shown at all?  I think so -- but it's not
appropriate to treat them as top levels.  Perhaps these specials
could be kept in newslocal file.