MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 is the latest version of the popular Usenet news client for Macintosh, Multi-Threaded NewsWatcher. It has a suite of new features that make reading news even faster and easier, including new features for connecting to multiple servers at the same time, posting with different personalities, viewing images inline, and posting binaries.
What's New?
MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 has many new features, and lots of additional improvements. Some of the larger new features are:
1. Read news on multiple servers at the same time.
2. Set up several personalities for posting, with different
reply addresses, headers and signatures.
3. View images inline, right in the article window!
Non-image binaries show up as file icons.
4. Read and post articles in different languages, like
Japanese and Chinese.
5. Post binaries to newsgroups.
6. Index the contents of articles that you read, so
that you can search them later.
7. Configure per-group preferences for list format,
character sets etc.
8. Many other new features, and feature enhancements.
See the "Getting started with 3.0" document for information on how to start using these features.
System Requirements
MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 is a PowerPC-only application, and will not run on 68k machines. It requires Mac OS 8.1 with version 1.0.3 or later of the Appearance Manager extension; Mac OS 8.5 or later is strongly recommended. MT-NW supports many of the new features of Mac OS 8.5, like proportional scroll bars, window icons and contextual menus. MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 also requires Internet Config 2.0 (which is included with Mac OS 8.5 and later). You'll need 4Mb or more of free memory to run MT-NewsWatcher.
MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 is strictly an online news reader, so requires that you have a TCP/IP connection, either direct to a local network, or via a dialup link (e.g. using PPP). For reading news, you'll need access to a news (NNTP) server, and for sending mail, a mail (SMTP) server. Information about these is normally provided by your Internet Service Provider, or system administrator.
Upgrading from older versions
If you've been using an earlier version of MT-NewsWatcher (e.g. 2.4.4), then your settings will automatically be updated the first time you run MT-NW 3.0. You can check by looking in the 'Personalities' and 'News Servers' dialogs under the 'Special' menu. After upgrading to 3.0, it is not recommended to run 2.4.4 with the same Preferences file, so you might want to back that up before using 3.0.
Saved user group list files are compatible with previous versions. MT-NW 3.0 stores some extra information in each file, which will be ignored by earlier versions. When you open each saved User Group List for the first time, you will get a dialog notifying you that it needs to be associated with a news server; just click OK in this dialog to use the default server.
Settings will not be automatically transferred from other NewsWatcher variants (e.g. YA-NewsWatcher). There is currently no way to import YA-NW filters into MT-NW 3.0.
Known issues
If you are experiencing a crash on quit, and you have QuicKeys installed, disable the "Folders" plugin in QuicKeys. This appears to be a Mac OS bug, and QuicKeys tech support are aware of this issue.
Subjects and articles using some kinds of encoding (e.g. the HZ encoding used for Simplified Chinese) are not decoded correctly. This will be fixed in a later release.
How much does it cost?
In accordance with the licensing agreement for derivatives of the original NewsWatcher program, MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 is free. It may not be sold for profit or included with other software, products, publications, or services which are sold for profit without the permission of Simon Fraser, but otherwise you should feel free to use it and redistribute it.
If you wish to express your gratitude to the author for all the hard work that has gone into this program, please see the MT-NewsWatcher home page (link available in the program's About window) for details.
For more information
Full documentation for MT-NewsWatcher 3.0 is available online (<http://www.best.com/~smfr/mtnw/>, clickable URL available in the programs's About window). That page also contains instructions for submitting problem reports and feature requests, and provides links to program updates.
About the author
MT-NewsWatcher has been in development over the past 5 years by Simon Fraser, based on the source code for the original NewsWatcher program by John Norstad. Simon is currently working in Mountain View, CA, for Netscape Communications on next-generation browser software.
Simon Fraser
(smfr@best.com)
November 1999.
This page was created using TextToHTML. TextToHTML is a free software for Macintosh and is (c) 1995,1996 by Kris Coppieters