SHOWNEWS and LOADNEWS-- WHAT THESE PROGRAMS ARE: LOADNEWS--This program loads Usenet articles onto a disk on a single user system from a downloaded file for later reading. SHOWNEWS--This program allows a user to read the news articles which have been loaded with LOADNEWS. WHY RUN THESE PROGRAMS: As Internet Service Providers (ISP) become more and more overloaded with subscribers, reading Usenet news on their systems directly can become a slow tedious process. MODEMs can be unavailable at heavily used sites for extended periods. News servers can operate slowly while trying to handle heavy work loads, resulting in longer costly on-line time for everyone on the system. Reading through many articles on-line can keep a phone busy for hours at a time, and if getting to the ISP is a toll call, high phone bills may be the result. However, if an ISP user could download a group of articles, and read them off- line, some of the problems dealing with the busy ISP might be avoided. The programs in this package can manage a collection of downloaded Usenet news group articles. Each downloaded file must contain a collection of articles which are to be loaded into a single news group (all of the articles in the file will be loaded into one single news group, regardless of their origin). Once the articles have been loaded with LOADNEWS, they can then be read with SHOWNEWS. Since LOADNEWS and SHOWNEWS have been designed to run on a single user system off-line, the full speed of the single user system is always available, and the phone will not be busy while articles are being read. Furthermore, the directory tree structure employed in this package allows for group names which include characters which are not allowed in directory or file names in the MSDOS and PCDOS operating systems; therefore, the group comp.std.c++ (and others) can be managed as easily as any other group. DISCLAIMER: Try these programs at your own risk! Considerable effort has been put into writing these programs to keep them from wildly rampaging through your computer, deleting and damaging everything reachable, but sometimes things go wrong anyway. The original author (Ralph W. Reid) may not be held responsible for any damages or losses, including but not limited to lost or damaged files, hardware failures, any type of physical disability or impairment which might be associated with computer operation, marital or other personal problems, or any other problems or situations which might be the result of operating this or any other computer software. RUN THESE COMPUTER PROGRAMS AT YOUR OWN RISK! REGISTRATION FOR CONTINUED OPERATION: This package is not free. If you find this package useful beyond a period of 15 days, you MUST register this package in accordance with the guidelines described in the ORDER.DOC file. When you register this software, you will receive the latest complete version of this package, which will include more news file management tools than the shareware version, as well as a printable manual for that version. See the ORDER.DOC file for more details. To print a copy of the ORDER.DOC file, enter the following command at the system prompt: COPY ORDER.DOC LPT1: assuming your printer is connected to the LPT1 printer port. If your printer is not connected to LPT1:, substitute PRN, LPT2:, LPT3:, COM1:, or COM2: to get the file to print with your system configuration. FILE LIST: INSTALL.EXE--software installation utility LOADNEWS.EXE--news files loader MANUAL.DOC--printable documentation file ORDER.DOC--printable registration/order form README.TXT--you're looking at it SHOWNEWS.EXE--news file reader SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386, 80486, or Pentium processor 640 KB RAM (no extended or expanded memory needed!) approximately 200 KB disk space for software several MB of disk space for news and temporary files MSDOS or PCDOS 3.00 or later RECOMMENDATIONS: 1. Install programs and news files on one or more hard drives. 2. Many news files are 1-3 KB, so small cluster sizes can save a lot of disk space (run CHKDSK on a partition to determine the cluster size; 1024 or 2048 are the best sizes for small news files; select the news root disk partition carefully). IMPORTANT NOTES: This software does require some installation. Read the introduction (section 1.0) and installation instructions (section 2.0) completely before installing and running the software in this package. The documentation file can be viewed on a screen or printed on a dot matrix, laser, ink jet, or bubble jet printer by executing the following command: COPY MANUAL.DOC LPT1: assuming your printer is connected to LPT1. Change LPT1: to PRN, LPT2:, LPT3:, COM1:, or COM2: as your system set up requires.