Newsreader Features - an Overview

Which features does a newsreader have?

Let's begin with a general description of the main features which apply to almost every program (listed alphabetically). A short description would probably use only part of this. Make your own choice!

Features - General Description of Program:
• A cool name :-)
• cost (commercial users, private users; trial period; cpu license, site license)
  license (GPL, open source, public domain; charityware, postcardware, shareware, trialware)
• binaries+packages (DEB, RPM)
• community - mailing lists
• community - newsgroups
• community - websites
• documentation (FAQs, HOWTOs, info pages, websites)
• dependencies: libraries (gnone, kde, motif)
• development (active? CVS, FTP site, homepage)
• download (main ftp site, mirrors)
• history (version numbers and their release dates)
• homepage (preferably just www.programname.tld)
• languages (english only? internationalization)
• maintainer - main contact, development team
• platforms (operating systems the program runs on)
• press (articles in magazines)
• version for developers (beta) + release date
• version for users (stable) + release date

Features - Message Index Navigation
• Move down/up to next/previous message
• Jump directly to first/middle/last message on current index page
• Select by index number
• Search next/previous by sender/subject
• Search next/previous by pattern (allows combinations)
• Page up/down by half/full page
• Move current message to top/middle/bottom line of page
• Sort by author ("from" aka sender), date, score, subject, threads, and give an additional sort method to subthreads
• Jump to first message of next/previous (sub)thread
• (Un)Collapse (aka Fold/unfold) all/current (sub)threads

Features - Reading
• Remove "read" status
• Mark current (sub)thread as (un)read (all combinations)

Features - Special:
• coding: supports yEnc
• interface: recognize multi-line URLs to interface with browser
• interface: select GUI browser and text browser
• protocols: NNTP!
• protocols: MIME? esp MIME/PGP

Features - Commands:
• Cancel + Supercede (of own posts)
• Crossposting + Followup-To
• Mail-Copies-To:
• Message tagging + operations on tagged posts
• Reply by email

Features - Connection:
• multiple connections
• multiple servers
• offline reading
• post queue (postponed sending)
• Get parent message from server
• Reconstruct thread of current message
• Get N latest articles of newsgroup from server

Features - Display of Message Index
• Color for own messages
• Color for followups to own messages
• Cycle between given index formats
• Group multi-part posts
• Select messages to match a pattern (limit to a subset)
• Show threads! either collapsed and/or with thread tree
• Show combinations of two or more newsgroups in one

Features - Display of Messages:
• GUI (graphical user interface) or TUI (text user interface)
• Colors for arbitrary header lines
• Colors for arbitrary texts
• Coloring of text by quote level
• Color for signature
• command: hide/show quoted text
• Show non-existant lines after end with vi-style tilde lines
• support internationlization/unicode
• support MIME - show attachment list
• support MIME - show attached images inline
• support MIME - show digital signature (PGP/MIME, OpenPGP/MIME)
• render and show text/html

Posting a New Message
• Correct MIME encodings of special characters in header
• Encoding of etxt/plain as quoted-printable or base64
• Followup-To
• Mail-Copies-To
• Adding Signature
• Warning: Max Line Length
• Warning: Max Signature Length
• Warning: Posting to Bogus Groups

Posting Followup
• Attribution
• Quoting Style
• Quoting of Signature
• TOFU? comb-quoting?
• Max Line Length?
• Reformatting of Long Lines?
• Warning: No Followup-To set when Crossposting
• Warning: Followup is redirected to other group
• Warning: Quotes/NewText Ratio
• Warning: Replying to invalid address?
• Digital Signature?

Features - Message Handling
• Save messages with custom-weed,full,minimal header
• Save messages to mailbox or maildir folder

Features - Scoring:
• Score by newsgroup, sender, subject
• Score by all header lines
• Score expiry for each rule

Features - Setup:
• optional setup file
• setup file modularity ("include/source file")
• multiple personalities/profiles/roles

Features - Misc:
• external editor
• filter (automatic selection aka killfile), scoring, adaptive scoring
• plugin interface
• support: regular expressions
• support: folder formats (maildir, mbox, mh)
• support: signatures (fixed, random, rotation, by newsgroup)
• templates
• tool: x-face
• tool: speller
• tool: html renderer

Gnus
• can repair broken postings by OE
• adaptive scoring
• parses web forums (eg slashdot) and present them like newsgroups
• can search for newsgroup faqs and download them, too
• recognizes mailing lists and knows how to "unsubscribe" and "mail to owner"
• can show smileys as icons
• can download messages from web archives like groups.google.com or newsarchiv.arcor.de
• can read web archives of mailing lists
• can show the relative time which has passed since the message was posted
• can show the info of the Date header in different formats (eg as "Date: 20010201T210144+0100" - see ISO 8601).