** PD/Shareware review / 715 words **

FireNews News Reader

Derryck Croker looks at this usenet client for STiK/STinG...

Our tour of FireNews starts with the utility program Babel - its task is to log on to the news server to collect and deliver articles after we've dialed a connection with STinG or STiK. All aboard then!

Our first stop is to collect the list of newsgroups your ISP carries - since it's an ASCII file then a list downloaded by another program can be used instead (NEWSie for example). Babel blotted its copybook by simply stopping once it had downloaded the list with no sign that it had finished.

With that hurdle overcome, next stop is a visit to Babel's ACTIVE file to specify which newsgroups to subscribe to. I'd strongly recommend including the "headers-only" flag in any newsgroup newly subscribed to to avoid a potentially extremely large download - unlike NEWSie (reviewed in AC#13) there's no way to limit the number of messages to download. As an alternative you may prefer to try Gary Priest's Newswatch utility (http://www.the-gap.demon.co.uk).
If your news server supports the Newnews command then Newswatch will collect message headers from a specified time and date - it's then easy to plug the highest message number from each group into the ACTIVE file, or indeed NEWSie's DEFAULT.GRP file. Newswatch takes no further part in the proceedings.

Babel is a dual purpose utility - its other job is to maintain your off-line message bases. This includes actually deleting messages marked as "deleted". To make this a simple double-click task:

** UL **
* From the desktop copy Babel to itself
* Rename the copy as MAINTAIN.PRG
* Install MAINTAIN.PRG as an application with the command line parameter -m
** /UL ** 
With some messages or headers downloaded Babel hands over to FireNew which is a standard GEM application. It runs happily on a variety of Atari systems (although topping it with the MagiC utility Appline calls forth what appears to be a harmless alert but with an incomprehensible error report!)

There's no mystery operating FireNews, with such a simple interface it's really self-explanatory with a double-click on a message header (downloaded as a result of using the "headers-only" flag) bringing an offer to download the message itself, or if the message is already on disk to display the message itself.
There's a facility to set flags on a contiguous range of messages, for example to mark for download later or mark for deletion. Another black mark though, there's only one way of counting messages for multiple flag-setting, and that's with a finger or pencil acting as a guide - the tip of one's tongue sticking out is an optional extra!

A variety of configuration options need to be set to set various aspects of FireNews - which may be a result of its non-registered status, but I could only make some settings "take" by first saving the configuration file and then taking it for a visit to a text editor. No big deal, just another minor irritation.

Firenew's simplicity continues into its handling of replying to newsgroup postings in the form of personal email to the author - the message is copied to the temporary file that your email program uses for editing, and then your chosen editor is called. This is an elegant approach, but there's no easy way to copy your reply to the newsgroup. Supported email clients are Antmail, NEWSie and Infitra, with Mymail on the cards for the future.

Listed in the documentation (there's online help with an ST-Guide hypertext) are some mouth-watering ideas for further development of FireNews. It's a great pity development seems to have stalled at the moment, because it shows great promise, but even as it stands it's perfectly usable despite one or two slightly rough edges.

** Boxout **
FireNews

Author:
Christian Andersson

Email:
faltrion@bigfoot.com
faltrion@earthling.net

http://firestorm.atari.org

Pros:
** UL **
* Easy to use compact program
* Messages marked as "Deleted" are still accessible until maintenance
* StringServer and similar server support
* AVServer support
* Free registration by email

Cons
** UL **
* Some menu options aren't implemented yet
* No response from author on requesting a key
* No built-in newsgroup search

60%

** Images and captions **
** FIRENWS2.IMG **
Running Babel in maintenance mode enables message threading - clicking on the arrows next to the message numbers at the top of the window is your navigation guide

** FIRELOGO.IMG
** FIRENWS1.IMG
** FIRERSC.IMG