flnews 1.1.0
============

Bug fixes:
- CORE: Authentication without password is now rejected (reported by
Marcel Logen).
- MAIN: Potential deadlocks in thread-safe replacement functions fixed.
- GUI: State machine modified to avoid race condition when articles are
marked read while group is not completely loaded yet.

New features and improvements:
- GUI: Option to automatically check for new articles added (an interval
in minutes can be configured with the new "refresh_interval" entry in
configfile).
- GUI: Checkbox "Tools->Debug mode" removed. Debug mode must be enabled
with command line option "-debug".
- NNTP: Protocol logfile is only created if debug mode was enabled (and
unlinked otherwise, if present). "Tools->Protocol console" window now
requires debug mode.
- GUI: Support for estimated article count in subscription window added
- GUI: Support for group descriptions in subscription window added
- NNTP: Support for LIST NEWSGROUPS command (RFC 3977) added
- GUI: Support for subscription proposals from server added
(offered to user after server was changed and group list is empty)
- CORE: Support for subscription proposals from server added
- NNTP: Support for LIST SUBSCRIPTIONS command (RFC 6048) added
- TLS: Support for LibreSSL 3.5 API added
- GUI: File save operations now suggest a pathname in the file selection
window.
- GUI: File save operations now ask the user before an existing file is
overwritten.
- CORE: Function added to suggest a pathname (created from home
directory, program name and timestamp).
- CORE: Message-IDs are now generated with algorithm A3 (uses a modified
Base64 alphabet with "/" replaced by "-"). This allows to generate
RFC 5538 conformant "news"-URIs without percent-encoding.

Sourcecode, Documentation, etc.:
<https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/>
<https://www.ybtra.de/flnews-mirror/>
<http://www.southcity.de/flnews/>

[Xpost and Fup2 news.software.readers]

On Thu, 26 May 2022 09:13:37 -0000, Michael Bäuerle wrote:

> Sourcecode, Documentation, etc.:
> <https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/>
> <https://www.ybtra.de/flnews-mirror/>
> <http://www.southcity.de/flnews/>
>

Hi I don't see the binary yet in the openSUSE OBS so I tried to build it
from source but I can't get it to build. The error that I'm getting is:

===> Check compilers
Check C compiler ... Cannot create binary
make: *** [Makefile:134: cfg/.cfg_valid] Error 1

This is on openSUSE Leap 15.2

Jason

Jason Evans wrote:
> On Thu, 26 May 2022 09:13:37 -0000, Michael Bäuerle wrote:
> >
> > Sourcecode, Documentation, etc.:
> > <https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/>
> > <https://www.ybtra.de/flnews-mirror/>
> > <http://www.southcity.de/flnews/>
>
> Hi I don't see the binary yet in the openSUSE OBS so I tried to build it
> from source but I can't get it to build. The error that I'm getting is:
>
> ===> Check compilers
> Check C compiler ... Cannot create binary
> make: *** [Makefile:134: cfg/.cfg_valid] Error 1
>
> This is on openSUSE Leap 15.2

Look for the file "config.log" to get more information.

A common problem is that OpenSSL is detected, but not completely
installed (some kind of development package is missing).
Look for:
|
| ===> Check dependencies
| [...]
| Check for OpenSSL ... [something that is supported]

If a supported API was detected here, the compiler test must be able to
link against OpenSSL.

Jason Evans wrote:
> On Thu, 26 May 2022 09:13:37 -0000, Michael Bäuerle wrote:
> >
> > Sourcecode, Documentation, etc.:
> > <https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/>
> > <https://www.ybtra.de/flnews-mirror/>
> > <http://www.southcity.de/flnews/>
>
> Hi I don't see the binary yet in the openSUSE OBS [...]

Martin has started the OpenSUSE package update today:
<https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/server:mail/flnews>

Michael Bäuerle wrote:
>> If a supported API was detected here, the compiler test must be able to
> link against OpenSSL.

I guess you can see that I finally got it built and running!

It is laid out well and I have no problem navigating the application but
there are still some things that could use improvement.

1. Be able to subscribe to multiple groups at once.
2. Include a filtering and/or killfile system.

Those are more feature requests than anything. However, there are some
bugs that I'm seeing also. Do you have a github or any other way to track
bugs?

Thanks for all of your work! It's always awesome to see new progress
going into Usenet software.

Jason

Jason Evans wrote:
> Michael Bäuerle wrote:
> >
> > If a supported API was detected here, the compiler test must be able to
> > link against OpenSSL.
>
> I guess you can see that I finally got it built and running!
>
> It is laid out well and I have no problem navigating the application but
> there are still some things that could use improvement.
>
> 1. Be able to subscribe to multiple groups at once.

It should work like this:
1) Group->Subscribe from menu to open subscription window
2) Click on first group to mark it
3) Click on next group while holding Ctrl-Key pressed
4) Repeat Step 3 to mark multiple groups
5) Click OK to subscribe all marked groups

> 2. Include a filtering and/or killfile system.

A scoring system is available, but there is no GUI for it yet.
In a standard configuration the scorefile should be located at:
"~/.config/flnews/scorefile".

The following example assigns a score of +10 to articles from user
John Doe in this group and -100 to user Bad Guy in all groups:
|
| # Fields are separated with colon
| news.software.readers:from_ere:10:John Doe
| # First field is a wildmat, "*" means all groups
| *:from_ere:-100:Bad Guy

flnews displays a green "+" for articles with positive score.
A black "X" is displayed for articles with negative score (and they are
automatically marked as read). It is currently not possible to "kill"
them (so that they are not displayed at all).

Ensure that flnews is not running while modifying the scorefile.

See section "SCORING" in the man page for details. The documentation is
a bit outdated, "extended" type from flnews 0.x is no longer supported
and now all rules have four fields (Target:Type:Score:String).
I will try to fix the documentation for the next release.

Note:
The field "String" (last field) should use UTF-8 and Normalization
Form C (e.g. the umlaut in my name must be encoded as 0xC3 0xA4,
not 0x61 0xCC 0x88).
A rule should then match regardless of the MIME representation in the
raw article (e.g. my name encoded as ISO-8859-1 or as UTF-8 in
Normalization Form D).

> Those are more feature requests than anything. However, there are some
> bugs that I'm seeing also. Do you have a github or any other way to track
> bugs?

No. Please send bug reports via E-Mail (e.g. via Help->Bug report).
Or post them in this group, if it's unclear whether it is a bug or not.

> Thanks for all of your work! It's always awesome to see new progress
> going into Usenet software.

You are welcome. I hope that Usenet will survive, even if most people
think its dying.

On 2022-05-26, Michael Bäuerle <michael.baeuerle@gmx.net> wrote:
> flnews 1.1.0
>============
>
.... snip ...

> Sourcecode, Documentation, etc.:
><https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/>
><https://www.ybtra.de/flnews-mirror/>
><http://www.southcity.de/flnews/>
>
>
> [Xpost and Fup2 news.software.readers]

Are there builds available for non-Linux platforms? I've used flnews
on Linux and have really enjoyed it.

meff wrote:
> On 2022-05-26, Michael Bäuerle <michael.baeuerle@gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > flnews 1.1.0
> > ============
> >
> > [...]
>
> Are there builds available for non-Linux platforms? I've used flnews
> on Linux and have really enjoyed it.

I maintain a pkgsrc package for NetBSD:
<https://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/news/flnews/README.html>
flnews 1.1.0 will be part of the upcoming 2022Q2 release.

Build was successful on SmartOS (Solaris based) too:
<https://bulktracker.appspot.com/pkg/ag1zfmJ1bGt0cmFja2VyciILEgVidWlsZBiAgIDZ06mKCwwLEgNwa2cYgICAud_T2AsM>

Some notes for other operating systems, even if there are currently no
binary packages available for them:

On macOS flnews can be used with a Cocoa GUI:
<https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/screenshots/flnews-0.10_cocoa.png>
(FLTK can also render color emojis with the Cocoa backend)
The application bundle from Dennis Preiser:
<https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/osx/osx.html#bundle>
does no longer work on machines with M1 processor. Dennis has provided
an updated bundle that will be available on the homepage soon.

On OpenBSD flnews can use the LibreSSL library from the base system.
The new API from LibreSSL 3.5.0 is supported since flnews 1.1.0.
TLSv1.3 should work.

On Windows flnews needs a POSIX API (e.g. Cygwin, Interix or WSL).
I got success reports that it runs with Cygwin+X11 and WSL+X11.
In theory it should be possible to compile FLTK with the native Windows
backend too (to get a native Windows GUI with no need for an X server).
AFAIK nobody has tested this option yet.

PS:
In general flnews tries to support old operating systems for which
FLTK still builds (back to AIX 5.1, HP-UX 11.11, NetBSD 2.0, Solaris 7
and GNU/Linux with kernel 2.2).
Old compilers are also supported (back to GCC 2.91 and SunPro compilers
from the last century).

Hi,
Michael Bäuerle wrote:
>
> flnews 1.1.0
> ============

I've installed it on debian stable.

I have had to do :

# apt install gawk libssl-dev libfltk1.3-dev
# apt install checkinstall #optionnal
# mkdir /usr/local/lib/flnews

As simple user :
make

As root :

checkinstall

Is there a way to search in the list of newsgroups?

My server has a lot of groups.

I cannot subscribe to my server with a user/password.
I may have not understood how to do it.

Best regards,

--
Stéphane

yamo' wrote:
> Michael Bäuerle wrote:
> >
> > flnews 1.1.0
> > ============
>
> I've installed it on debian stable.
>
> I have had to do :
>
> # apt install gawk libssl-dev libfltk1.3-dev
^^^^
Since Debian 11 their mawk should now be POSIX conformant enough too.

> # apt install checkinstall #optionnal
> # mkdir /usr/local/lib/flnews
>
> As simple user :
> make
>
> As root :
>
> checkinstall
>
>
> Is there a way to search in the list of newsgroups?
>
> My server has a lot of groups.

This is not implemented yet.

Searching is only supported in the article body of the currently
displayed article via "Article->Search in article". This search
function supports Unicode case folding. A case insensitive search
should e.g. find both capital versions of "Straße" (street):

STRASSE
STRAẞE

> I cannot subscribe to my server with a user/password.
> I may have not understood how to do it.

Note that currently only AUTHINFO USER/PASS authentication is supported,
no SASL or X.509 client certificate. This means you need a TLS
connection to protect the login data (or you need to disable the TLS
requirement explicitly with the option CFG_NNTP_AUTH_UNENCRYPTED in the
file "CONFIG").

Hi,
Michael Bäuerle a écrit :
> yamo' wrote:
>> I've installed it on debian stable.
> Searching is only supported in the article body of the currently
> displayed article via "Article->Search in article". This search
> function supports Unicode case folding. A case insensitive search
> should e.g. find both capital versions of "Straße" (street):

Thanks, I will très it.

> Note that currently only AUTHINFO USER/PASS authentication is supported,
> no SASL or X.509 client certificate. This means you need a TLS
> connection to protect the login data (or you need to disable the TLS
> requirement explicitly with the option CFG_NNTP_AUTH_UNENCRYPTED in the
> file "CONFIG").

My server is badly configured for SSL.
Flnews and will be usefull to debug it.

Thanks for your work.

--
Stéphane

Michael Bäuerle wrote:
>
> [...]
> The application bundle from Dennis Preiser:
> <https://micha.freeshell.org/flnews/osx/osx.html#bundle>
> does no longer work on machines with M1 processor. Dennis has provided
> an updated bundle that will be available on the homepage soon.

FYI: The new application bundle is now on the homepage.