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                             NEWSLIST
                             ========    
            A program to assist HTTP browsing of newsgroups
            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WWW browsers such as NCSA Mosaic allow the user to read newsgroup
articles by specifying the group name in a URL eg 'news:comp.answers'.

To browse through many groups, though, (and there are several thousand
of them) you really need a page or pages containing links to all the
groups. There are some good ones out there, for example,

    http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/News/Groups/Overview.html

is the standard one at CERN, but it only shows the groups available there,
which may be rather different from those available on your machine.

Newslist is a program which creates a hierarchy of pages for you based
on the groups available from YOUR server. It is written in python - a
splendid interpreted object-oriented language which I suggest you get
right now from the directory /pub/python at ftp.cwi.nl, if you haven't
already got it.

You should be able to see some sample output by looking at:
   http://pelican.cl.cam.ac.uk/newspage/root.html

Descriptions of newsgroups can be added from a file with one group
per line. eg:

	alt.foo   Articles about foo
	comp.bar  Programming in 'bar' and related languages

A suitable list detailing most groups can be found at ftp.uu.net in
/uunet-info/newsgroups.gz.

Make sure you read the information at the beginning of the program source and
configure the variables before running.

In addition to python, you need:

	An NNTP-based news feed.
	A directory in which to put the pages.

The programming is not very beautiful, but it works!  It comes with no
warranty, express or implied, but with the hope that some others may
find it useful.

Comments, improvements & suggestions welcomed.
Quentin Stafford-Fraser

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                       Quentin Stafford-Fraser
            http://pelican.cl.cam.ac.uk/people/qs101/me.html
 
 Cambridge University Computer Lab        Rank Xerox Cambridge EuroPARC
 qs101@cl.cam.ac.uk                           fraser@europarc.xerox.com
 Tel: +44 223 334411                                Tel: +44 223 341521
 Fax: +44 223 334679                                Fax: +44 223 341510
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