Vnews  1.1
                             2-September-1987

                    Copyright 1987  By Stephen Vermeulen

                             3635 Utah Dr. N.W.,
                             Calgary, Alberta,
                             CANADA, T2N 4A6

                             (403) 282-7990.

                    This program is in the public domain
                    with the exception that it shall not
                    be packaged or distributed  with any
                    product that is sold.

Introduction:

     A while ago AMUC (the AMiga Users of Calgary) started a section
     of their newsletter disk called "The Best of USENET".  Several
     formats were considered, but in the end the most workable was to
     leave the news files alone as individual files.  There were two
     large problems with this, the first was that the USENET drawer
     had a large number of icons and the second was that the directory
     took a long time.  In order to reduce the number of icons Vnews
     was brought to life, with this the user only had to click on one
     icon and then he could browse through the files just by clicking
     the mouse.  Vnews did not solve the directory speed problem, alas
     the woes of AmigaDOS!

Syntax from CLI:

     Vnews [dir_name [first_file]]

     Vnews dir_name

           will display the contents of all the files in
           the directory named dir_name.

     Vnews

           will display the contents of all the files in
           the current directory.

     Vnews dir_name first_file

           will allow you to read all the files within the
           directory "dir_name" and will start you at
           file "first_file"

Syntax from Workbench:

     Just point and click.  To specify the directory to read the
     news files from enter the following line into the TOOL TYPES
     field:

           DIR=MyDirectoryName

     The default width that tabs are to be expanded to is specified
     by the following line:

           TAB=n

     where n is a small positive number.

     The reading can start with any particular file, just include
     a line like:

           FIRST=first_file_name

Source Code:

     The source code is available, in fact it should be present on this
     disk, if it is not go break someone's legs...  This version was
     written in Manx 3.4a, the first version was in Lattice 3.1; draw
     your own conclusions...

Usage:

     When the program is running you control everything with 9 gadgets, all
     of which are on the title bar.  The close window gadget is used to
     exit from the program.  The Prev gadget moves you to the previous file
     in the directory.  The back gadget moves you back one page in the
     current file.  The fore gadget moves you foward one page in the
     current file.  The next gadget moves you to the next file in the
     directory.  The ? gadget prints a brief help window.  The blank box
     gadget is a file name requester, just click on it, type in a file name
     and then when you hit return you will be moved to that particular
     file.  Finally, the last two gadgets are the standard window
     front/back gadgets.

     The name of the currently displayed file is displayed in the title
     bar too.

Bugs:

     Ha!  There has to be one some where...

Wishes:

     Faster directory building, an internal directory function that would
     put up a window of all the file names for you to click on the one
     you wanted to view next.