OT: Recommend a decent news reader?

Agent does a decent job as a news reader. It doubtless has some quirks but I've been using it for so many years that I must have internalized them all. ;-)

I use Thunderbird. It's ok but the message filtering is so-so. I have problems filtering out Gunner & his survivalism crossposting buddies & all the gun/politics d******ds.

Not wanting to hijack the thread but if anyone has a surefire method of filtering out corssposts with Thunderbird then I'd love to know the secret.

Agent is o.k. for news but lacks even IMAP support for mail.

Maybe Agent 7 does better, but Agent 6 has still a message hashing problem - with lots of messages in a folder it can happen you get threads mixed. And Agent 6 doesn't recognize quote characters preceded by whitespace, so this:

I recommend to look also at 40tude although it's no more actively supported.

Oliver

can you name the difference between SeaMonkey and Thunderbird?

Oliver

When a message is cross-posted, the group names are comma-separated, such as:

Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth,comp.arch.embedded

Therefore, looking for "," in the "Newsgroups" field will flag cross-posted messages.

If you want to blanket-kill-file all cross-posts in Seamonkey or Thunderbird :

Tools -> Message Filters -> New (Alt-T Alt-F Alt-N) Select "Customize..." to create "Newsgroup" in the list of fields to choose from.

The rule is:

If "Newsgroups" contains "," Then ("Delete Message" and "Stop Filter Execution")

Does that work for you?

Regards.

Can you state the short-comings of Seamonkey?

(There may be convoluted ways to do what you're looking for.)

Regards.

Thank you!

I've looked for that info for ages! I've set up the filter, time to wait & see how it goes....

Doh! I meant "Newsgroups" (with an 'S' at the end) To see the fields on a random message, Ctrl+U (view message source)

Happy to oblige ;-)

You can run the filter "a posteriori" (after the fact) to delete messages that have already been downloaded.

Select the filter, then "Run selected filter(s) on" the appropriate newsgroup, e.g. comp.arch.embedded and click "Run now".

You can check before what will be deleted by running a search (Tools -> Search Messages) with the same matching pattern as your filter.

Regards.

MicroPlanet Gravity works for me.

Mark Borgerson

What do you call decent? I have been using slrn for years now. I use the linux console version, but there is a windows binary available from

t.

I use Thunderbird under Windows 7 and also under Vista.

What sort of crossposts do you want to filter out? If it's crossposts to a specific newsgroup, I've been doing that for months. I don't remember the details, which are poorly documented. However, if you add news.mozilla.or g to the list of news servers you connect to, then subscribe to newsgroup m ozilla.support.thunderbird, you should be able to reach people who know the details better than I do.

If it's crossposts to any other newsgroup, I've forgotten if entering a com ma instead of a specific newsgroup name works with this method.

secret.

Some feedback - using the above the filtering now works very nicely. Needed moreso on other groups than c.a.e which is very low noise. Thanks for your help Noob.

specific newsgroup, I've been doing that for months. I don't remember the details, which are poorly documented. However, if you add news.mozilla.org to the list of news servers you connect to, then subscribe to newsgroup mozilla.support.thunderbird, you should be able to reach people who know the details better than I do.

instead of a specific newsgroup name works with this method.

Thanks for the reply Robert.

Noob replied up above with what I needed to know. I frequent some metalworking NG's which are usually filled with crossposted political drivel. Knocking out crossposts has worked wonders.

Oliver Betz schrieb:

Technically, it's mostly identical code, so functions and behaviour are similar, if not identical.

But the GUI is completely different - and I strongly prefer SeaMonkey.

Tilmann

that's what I assumed, and I wondered what Dennis wanted to express.

Interesting, I will give it a try! I'm looking for a good mail client (instead of Pegasus Mail), found Thunderbird not that bad but didn't yet get to like it.

Oliver

I use the old and venerable alpine ... a text based mail tool based on Pine (Pine is not ELM), and I've used it for many years. This allows me to ssh onto my server from anywhere and use a text based tool to read news, email etc.

While it doesn't natively show images, it does have an image viewer I can use over X windows ... and has threaded news reading capabilities ...

Cheers, Rob.

You might think so, but no, not really. Maybe the most noticeable is that it opens into a browser. To get to news you have to select it from the Window menu. Fussy, aren't I? Maybe there's a shortcut for this? Honestly, I don't really know what I don't like. I used OE for so long I was really used to it. This is just... different. I have no interest in a command line version and it sounds like Thunderbird is similar. I guess I was hoping for the "Well all the cool guys use X. Everything else is a joke." Doesn't seem to be the case.

Thanks to all for the replies.

Scott

NotReallyMe schrieb:

That's configurable in the general settings.

Mine always comes up with mail/news - and if I want to use the browser, I press Ctl-1. You can also open both windows on startup. Or use Ctl-2 to open the mail/news window, of course - faster than using the mouse.

Taste is different. Choose the one you like (as long as it conforms to the standards). There are several useful news clients.

Tilmann

BTW, you should update to the current release (2.17).

Edit -> Preferences -> Appearance tab "When SeaMonkey starts up, open" check "Mail & Newsgroups" (and any other box you'd like)

It's also possible to create a Windows shortcut that opens directly to "Mail & Newsgroups". (I used that a long time ago, I can look it up if you want.)

Microsoft can't be trusted to follow standards. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish is in their DNA. I'm glad IE is getting slaughtered on the "web 2.0" front.

I understand; change is always disconcerting. It's the reason so many people stick with Windows.

The pref menu for Firefox and Thunderbird is a dumbed-down version of Seamonkey's pref menu.

There just might be as many NNTP clients as there are users ;-)

Regards.

P.S. you should upgrade your Seamonkey Help -> Check for Updates