NewsWerthy

Purpose of the application

NewsWerthy offline reader for DOS is used to read and reply to usenet messages in the SOUP format. These are generally generated by uqwk, which is freeware.

Distribution category

NewsWerthy is shareware.

Availability

The distribution file name is NWRTH1??.ZIP which can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/billw It is copyright and no source code is available.

Description of the application

SOUP packets are uncompressed using pkunzip. The newsgroups are then organized into a listbox so that a newsgroup can be selected. The messages are also listed in a listbox. Each message is read in a TScroller window, with many options available from the status line, such as save to file, reply, etc.

Replies are compressed using pkzip. The messages in the reply packet can be edited with an external editor. Messages can also be deleted. The list of messages can be sorted by date, from, subject or no sort.

Developmental problems

The library is compilied with 80286 code, which meant recompiling the library so that 8088 systems could run the program.

There are several bugs, one of which the author corrected himself. There is a bug which causes monochrome systems to generate a divide by 0 error in any dialog boxes that use TInputLine (has to do with the cursor). The bug fix that resulted has been added to the rest gathered on the CompuServe TurboVision forum.

Reason for choosing Turbo Vision

Basically, because it came with Borland C++ 3.1 and, at the time, the author wanted to write a DOS program.

Contact

William Werth (Bill) billw@eskimo.com