⟦df1bb2a95⟧

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Installation procedure steps:

1) Edit file config.h, which defines system dependent parameters such as
spool directory, and so on.  I have NOT ifdef'ed this file for likely
changes for SYSV or anything like that.  You probably can use this file
untouched only if you are UCB with news installed in all the standard places.
Even then, you may not like some of the defaults.

Note very carefully the definitions involving mailer treatment.

2) decide which makefile to use, edit it to fill in the correct libraries
for your system.  See notes 2) below for explanation.

3) make vn

4) put the executable where you want it.  put the man page, vn.man
where you want it.  roff it with -man to print it out.  If you made
some configuration changes, or you are a SYSV installation, you may
want to modify the manual a bit.  It is written to reflect the actions in
the config.h as distributed, and as used on UCB (it refers to job control).

Notes:

1)
	If you modify the default mailer, poster, printer or editor, this is
	their invocation, ufile being a tempfile name.

	"mailer [path] <ufile" - path obtained from newsarticle, possibly
		modified by user.  May be invoked with no argument dependent
		on how you set up config.h.  No path argument if INLETTER.
	"poster <ufile" - thus the "inews -h" to get header lines from
		file, giving user a chance to modify headers.
	"printer files 2>/dev/null"
	"editor ufile"

	You may also be interested in the header file "tune.h" which contains
	some sizing / performance affecting parameters.

2)
	There are three makefile templates, all very simple, because I
	want to make you think about whether you have the system V regular
	expression library, and strtok() or not.  If you have regex and
	regcmp (as opposed to re_exec and re_comp, the ucb regular
	expression library), I advise you to use them.  regex and
	regcmp are used because they have the ability to keep several
	regular expressions compiled at once.  The file "reg.c" is an
	implementation of regcmp and regex on top of the ucb calls,
	with a special procedure called "regfree" used in place of the
	generic "free" call used with regcmp / regex.  Use the system V
	calls if you have them available because:

		i) They should be faster than the reg.c code, which
		recompiles the "current" ucb string every time you
		switch regular expressions.

		ii) I briefly checked out reg.c once, and it seemed to
		work.  Our system has the "real" calls available, so I
		run with those.  reg.c hasn't been used much by me, although
		I've had nobody tell me it doesn't work.

	strtok.c defines the strtok() and strpbrk() functions.  As with
	regex, if you have system libraries, they are likely more efficient -
	these string routines will often be done in assembler on a given
	machine.

	tmpnam.c defines the tmpnam() routine.  Even if a BSD system has it,
	you might use it anyhow.  We are currently running under Ultrix on a
	microvax, and in fact, the Ultrix version doesn't work right (as of
	the last time I checked).  Also, the tmpnam.c version will produce
	temp files named vnXXXXXX, instead of a generic tmpXXXXXX.

	There are 2 IFDEF's handled in the makefile templates:

		SYSV - system V specific portions.

		JOBCONTROL - brackets the parts dealing with the SIGTSTP
			signal handling for job control.  This could really
			be done with "#ifndef SYSV", I suppose, but this
			clearly marks this specific difference.

	The ifdef OLDRC may be set to make the .newsrc format consistent
	with an apparently earlier readnews format which would not take
	ranges for "articles read".  This also makes -i an alias for a -x
	option, and assumes that any arguments with no options are really
	-n options.  These changes came from Australia, and are apparently
	compatible with whatever other newsreader was being used there.

	SYSV, JOBCONTROL, OLDRC and the definitions referred to in config.h
	are the whole set.

	If you are BSD but have regex/regcomp:

		mf.re is the makefile template.  Fill in your local
		libraries (termcap), the library to find regex/regcmp in.
		This makefile defines "regfree" simply to be "free", and
		doesn't link the "reg" object.  JOBCONTROL defined.  This
		template also assumes you have strtok() / strpbrk().  If you
		don't, include strtok.o in the objects.  This is actually
		the makefile I use for Ultrix as given.

	If you are BSD but don't have regex/regcomp:

		mf.nore is the makefile template.  Fill in your local
		libraries (termcap).  This makefile pulls in the "reg"
		object.  JOBCONTROL defined.  If you DO have strtok() /
		strpbrk() available, you might remove strtok.o from the
		object list.

	If you are SYS V:

		mf.sysv is the makefile template.  Fill in your local
		libraries (termcap).  This makefile does not pull in
		the extra objects.  It defines "regfree" to "free", and
		turns the BSD index / rindex into strchr / strrchr.
		SYSV defined.

		I haven't personally tried any SYSV stuff out - I don't have
		access to a SYS V machine running news.  You might want to
		include tmpnam.o in the object list instead of using the
		standard one, to get specifically named temp. files.

	Something pretty close to the current vn version used to run here
	on a VAX 780 under BSD 4.2.

NEWS VERSIONS:

I know there's a lot of news versions running out there.  We seem to
be running something called B2.10.3, for those of you whom that signifies
anything to.  Something to look at is your "active" file.  I expect to
find a newsgroup followed by the high, then low, spooling numbers (followed
by a y/n for posting priveledge, which I don't care about).  Earlier news
versions used to only have a single spooling number.  vn is written to
handle this, assuming 0 for a low spool.  My basic assumptions are that
the "active" file gives the newsgroups and spooling information and that
articles will be numeric filenames living in the directory obtained by
replacing periods with slashes in the newsgroup, and prefixing the spool
directory.  I hope these really are "basic" assumptions that work across all
versions.  vn is intended to be highly fault-tolerant regarding what it
finds for header lines - it may not be able to make sense out of an "article",
but it's willing to let you look at it anyway, with the single exception
that it throws away articles which turn out to be empty or 1 line files (
COUNTING the header lines - articles with 0 lines in them are OK.  I'm
just preventing the "unknown subject, unknown author, and no text" case).

RESOURCE USE:

vn should look like people sitting in an editor once it is done with its
reading phase.  During the reading phase, it is beating mercilessly on
the spooling directory, reading file after file.  I have thought from time
to time about having a daemon do this work periodically, building a master
file of title information for vn to access.  Its reading phase would then
be a "pause" rather than a "phase", with the penalty that you couldn't
read anything until the daemon had gotten around to it.

vn maintains a large temporary file containing the users page screens.
Again, it should look a lot like the user is using an editor which has
a temp file out there for its edit buffer.  MAX_C in "tune.h" can be
used to help control the size.

malloc() usage - Around 50 bytes per newsgroup is dynamically allocated,
plus storage for character strings and the current screen structure.
My guess would be on the order of 20-40K.  It's all "permanent" information
maintained for the entire session, hence unfreed.  Regular expression
storage is freed, but is minimal anyway.
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⟦df1bb2a95⟧ TextFile

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