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.\" This manpage has been completely rewritten by Matthias Friedrich
.\" <matt@mafr.de> based on the slrn reference manual
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.TH slrn 1 "February 2008" Unix "User Manuals"
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.SH NAME
slrn \- An easy to use NNTP / spool based newsreader.
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.SH SYNOPSIS
.B slrn
[\-aCdknmw]
[\-C\-]
.RI [\-D name ]
.RI "[\-f\ " newsrc-file ]
.RI "[\-i\ " config-file ]
[\-k0]
[\-\-create]
.RI "[\-\-debug\ " file ]
[\-\-help]
[\-\-inews]
.RI "[\-\-kill\-log " file ]
.RI "[\-\-nntp [\-h\ " server "] [\-p\ " port ]]
[\-\-show-config]
[\-\-spool]
[\-\-version]
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.SH DESCRIPTION
.I slrn
is an easy to use but powerful NNTP / spool based newsreader.
.PP
It is highly customizable, supports scoring, free key bindings and can be
extended using the embedded S-Lang interpreter.
.PP
To use slrn, you either need to set the
.I NNTPSERVER
environment variable to the server you want to read news from or specify a
server on the command line.
A
.I newsrc
file is needed, too.  In case you do not yet have one, you can create it
using ``slrn \-f ~/.jnewsrc \-\-create''.
.PP
Inside slrn, online help is available via the '?' key.
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.SH OPTIONS
.PP
The following options can be used when calling slrn from the command line.
They override both environment variables and settings in private and global
configuration files.
.IP "\-a"
Read active file when checking for new news.
.IP "\-C"
Use colors without checking if the terminal supports it.
.IP "\-C\-"
Don't use colors, even if the terminal supports it.
.IP "\-d"
Get group descriptions (taglines) from the news server.  Please note that
this may cause a download of several hundred kilobytes and thus can take a
long time.  The output is saved to a local file, so you only need to do this
once.  May not be specified in combination with
.IR \-\-create .
.IP "\-D\fIname\fP"
Add name to the list of predefined preprocessing tokens, which can be used
in your slrnrc file to have conditionally interpreted lines.  See the slrn
reference manual for details.
.IP "\-f \fInewsrc-file\fP"
Use file as the newsrc file for this session.  This is permanently set via
the
.I server
configuration command.
.IP "\-h \fIhost[:port]\fP"
Connect to the NNTP server on
.IR host ,
overriding the
.I $NNTPSERVER
environment variable.  If no
.I port
is given, the default NNTP port (119) will be used.  This option is only
accepted after
.I \-\-nntp
or when NNTP is the default mode.
.IP "\-i \fIconfig-file\fP"
Read file as the initialization (slrnrc) file.  The default is
to use .slrnrc (or slrn.rc on VMS, OS/2 and Windows) in your
home directory.
.IP "\-k"
Don't read the
.IR "score file" .
.IP "\-k0"
Read the score file, but inhibit
.I expensive
scoring. A scoring rule is
.I expensive
if it contains header lines that are not included in the server's overview
files.  This makes applying them slow.
.IP "\-m"
Force mouse support (without checking if it works on the current terminal).
.IP "\-n"
Do not check for new groups (usually resulting in a faster startup).
.IP "\-p \fIN\fP"
Use port N to connect to the NNTP server.
.IP "\-w"
Wait for a key before switching to full screen mode, allowing the user to
read startup messages.
.IP "\-\-create"
Read the active file (the list of all groups) from the news server to create
an initial newsrc file.
.IP "\-\-debug \fIfile\fP"
Write debugging output to
.IR file .
.IP "\-\-help"
Show help for command line switches.
.IP "\-\-inews"
Use an external
.I "inews program"
to post articles.
.IP "\-\-kill\-log \fIfile\fP"
Keep a log of all articles that were killed by the scorefile in
.IR file .
.IP "\-\-nntp"
Use builtin NNTP support for reading and posting (an external program is
used to post if slrn was compiled with \-\-enable\-force\-inews).
.IP "\-\-pull"
Spool outgoing articles locally for slrnpull to send.
.IP "\-\-show-config"
Print detailed information about slrn configuration.
.IP "\-\-spool"
Read directly from spool.
.IP "\-\-version"
Print version and some compile time settings.
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.SH ENVIRONMENT
.I slrn
uses the following list of environment variables.  Note: environment
variables can be overridden by configuration files or command line switches.
.TP
.B COLORTERM
If this variable is set, slrn will assume that your terminal
supports
.IR "ANSI color sequences" .
It also enables a workaround for a problem with the
.I mouse reporting
when running slrn inside of an rxvt.
.TP
.B DISPLAY
If set, slrn assumes that X11 is running.
.TP
.B EDITOR
See
.IR $SLRN_EDITOR .
.TP
.B HOME
See
.IR $SLRNHOME .
.TP
.B HOSTNAME
If no
.I hostname
is given, the value of this environment variable is used.
.TP
.B LOGNAME
See
.IR $USER .
.TP
.B NAME
Set it to your realname, if slrn can't determine it otherwise.
.TP
.B NNTPSERVER
You can use this variable to tell slrn which NNTP server to
connect to.  It can be overridden by the command line option \-h.
.TP
.B ORGANIZATION
The name of your organization.
.TP
.B PRINTER
On unix systems, slrn pipes the current article to ``lpr \-P
.IR $PRINTER "''"
to print it.
.TP
.B PWD
This variable is only used on unix systems that don't support getcwd(3).  In
these cases, it should be set to the current directory at the time slrn is
invoked.  This is usually done by the shell and nothing the user has to
worry about.
.TP
.B REPLYTO
The value of this variable is used as the default if you do not set
.I replyto
in your slrnrc file.
.TP
.B SLANG_EDITOR
See
.IR $SLRN_EDITOR .
.TP
.B SLRNHELP
You can set this variable to a file slrn
should read its online help from.  This is only needed when the default key
bindings have been changed and you want the help function to reflect this.
If unset, slrn looks for help.txt in the configuration directory.
.TP
.B SLRNHOME
When interpreting filenames as relative to your home directory,
slrn uses this variable to find out what your home directory is.
If
.I $SLRNHOME
is unset,
.I $HOME
is used instead.
.TP
.B SLRN_EDITOR
The editor to start for editing articles.
If this variable is unset, slrn subsequently looks at
.IR $SLANG_EDITOR ", " $EDITOR " and " $VISUAL .
.TP
.B SLRN_SLANG_DIR
If set, slrn will search for slang macros here. If not set slrn will search in
the default path, which is defined at compile time (usually share_dir/slang).
.TP
.B TMP
Indicates the directory in which slrn should save temporary
files.
.TP
.B TMPDIR
.RI "See " $TMP .
.TP
.B USER
Your username, if slrn can't get it from the system by other means.
.TP
.B VISUAL
.RI "See " $SLRN_EDITOR .
.\"
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.SH FILES
.TP
$HOME/.slrnrc
User-specific configuration file.
.TP
config_dir/slrn.rc
System-wide configuration file. config_dir is set at compile time
(/usr/local/etc by default).
.TP
$HOME/.jnewsrc
default newsrc file for 
.I slrn.
.TP
$HOME/.jnewsrc.dsc
Per user newsgroups descriptions.
.TP
share_dir/newsgroups.dsc
Global newsgroup descriptions. share_dir is set at compile time
(/usr/local/share/slrn by default).
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.SH SEE ALSO
The documentation that comes with
.IR slrn ,
especially FIRST_STEPS, manual.txt, FAQ and score.txt.  If you consider
writing S-Lang macros, also look at README.macros and slrnfuns.txt.

Recent versions of the slrn manual and the FAQ as well as additional
information can also be found on slrn's official home page:
http://slrn.sourceforge.net/

Questions about
.I slrn
that are not covered by existing documentation may be posted to the
newsgroup
.I news.software.readers
where they will be answered by knowledgeable users or the author of the
program.  In addition, announcements of new versions of
.I slrn
are posted there.

The latest version of
.I slrn
is available from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/slrn/
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.SH AUTHOR
John E. Davis <jed@jedsoft.org>