PLOR Davide Barbieri paci@prosa.it, version 0.3.3 ALPHA, 25 August 1998 THIS IS FREE SOFTWARE. NO WARRANTY IS MADE FOR THIS SOFTWARE !!!ATTEN- TION!!! PLOR IS AT A VERY ALPHA STAGE. THIS RELEASE IS INTENDED TO BE USED BY ALPHA TESTER, IN ORDER TO FIND BUGS AND SUGGESTS IMPROVEMENTS 11.. WWhhaatt iiss PPLLOORR?? 11..11.. WWhhaatt PPLLOORR ssttaanndd ffoorr?? PLOR means Prosa Linux Offline Reader 11..22.. WWhhaatt iitt ddooeess?? As the name implies it is a news & mail off-line reader; in particular it reads qwk or soup packet generate by uqwk program (or some other similar packet programs). Now it is capable to read only soup packet with bugged reply capabilities. 11..33.. WWhheerree II ccaann ffiinndd PPLLOORR?? The last version of PLOR can be found on: ftp://ftp.pluto.linux.it/pub/pluto/devel with name likes plor-???.tgz, where ??? stands for version number. There should be a (possibly updated) version also, on sunsite: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/bbs/mail 11..44.. HHooww ttoo ccoommppiillee pplloorr aanndd iinnssttaallll unpack plor.tgz wherever you want: gzip -d plor.tgz tar -xvf plor.tar now you can remove plor.tar; 1. `cd' to the directory containing the package's source code and type `./configure' to configure the package for your system. If you're using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh ./configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute `configure' itself. Running `configure' takes awhile. While running, it prints some messages telling which features it is checking for. 2. Type `make' to compile the package. 3. Type `make install' to install the programs and any data files and documentation. There should be no problem in compiling plor; if there are any email us, please! PLOR was compiled with -ansi -pedantic options of gcc; this should make PLOR some-what portable on other UNIX-like systems. 11..55.. HHooww ttoo uussee pplloorr Take your soup (or qwk) packet and uncompress it in the plor directory; simply call 'plor' and follow the online instructions. There won't be difficulties to use plor; if there are some, please let us know what kind of difficulties you found using plor. Plor support some options: +o -h shows a little help screen +o -p this option is called ``plain output''; it makes plor to produced a plain output, without formatting it, or without adding anything else than the message; the message could then be formatted with a pager like less; this could be useful for someone who decide to make a front-end for plor +o -c n select conference number n +o -m n select message number n +o -s select soup mode +o -q select qwk mode (not yet implemented) So if you want to see only the first message of the first conference in soup mode, and you want to have a plain output, because you like to have it formatted by less, use: plor -p -s -c 1 -m 1 | less 11..66.. FFrreeeeBBSSDD Yes. Even if PLOR is a Linux Offline Reader, it seems to run also on FreeBSD. Thanks to Tim Vanderhoek <\tthoek@freenet.hamilton.on.ca\ for the port. Refer to him for any FreeBSD related problem with PLOR. 22.. GGeenneerraall IInnffoorrmmaattiioonn 22..11.. HHiissttoorryy Me and a friend of mine (zeno), were poor students of University of Padua (Italy). We love linux. PLOR, for us, were an experimental program, which could help us in learning C language; if it will work as an offline reader... well, much better :-) Now PLOR, is developed by me, with help of other guys at ProSA srl, a company devoted to developing open-source software. 22..22.. WWhhyy uussee pplloorr Some of you could ask why plor exists. Well, let me stress that plor is an OFFLINE News & Mail READER. This is useful for people using modem, or people which can use the computer only at home, where there is a Linux Box without an internet connection. There are a lot of programs for people who want to read mail and news offline, but none of this has all the features that I want. These are: +o the ability to use my real mailbox and my real .newsrc, so I can read news & mail both when I am at university (with a full internet connection), and when I am at home offline, without loosing track of what I have already read +o the ability to be used with a TCP/IP connection (PPP, SLIP, etc.) or with a terminal one (sz and rz are always 10% faster than a PPP connection) +o the ability to be run on my provider server, so when I connect I have only to download my `gzip -9' news & mail packet. Those abilities are achieved with uqwk and a uqwk reader. uqwk already exists for Linux, but there's no good uqwk reader (I hate atp!). So I write plor. 22..33.. OOfffflliinnee rreeaaddiinngg wwiitthh PPLLOORR -- mmiinniiHHOOWWTTOO I use: uqwk +m +n -r +L to download news & mail on my provider server (or on a machine at university); then I pack all the *.MSG file in a newsmail.zip file with `gzip -9' These file can be put on a floppy disk, if I am in console at university, or can be downloaded via my PPP connection, or also using minicom. This is versatile. When I have newsmail.zip at home, I simply unzip it, and use plor to read and post. When plor exits, it will create a REPLY.zip file, which I uploaded next time I connect (or go to university), and post my new mail messages and news posts with uqwk. For more information: man uqwk. 22..44.. AAuutthhoorrss Davide Barbieri paci@prosa.it via Aldo Moro 36, Campagnola di Brugine 35020 Padova Italy Prosa Progettazione Sviluppo Aperto srl prosa@prosa.it via Degli Zabarella 3, Padova, 35121 Italy. Tel: 049660519 Fax: 0498780504 22..55.. CCooppyyrriigghhtt Plor is FREE SOFTWARE. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.