This version of slrn 0.8.8.2 can run under OS/2 as well as Unix or VMS. The
compiled binary, with everything you need to get it running, can be found on
ftp.cdrom.com and ftp-os2.nmsu.edu as slrn0882.zip, in the os2/network/tcpip
directory. There are still a couple of restrictions in this version relative
to the Unix version, but it's working well enough to use. There are also
some additional setup requirements beyond those for slrn itself.

To use this version of slrn:
1) Optionally, place this version of emx.dll somewhere on your LIBPATH. You
must have version 0.9b of the library (which this package includes) in order
to avoid nagging error messages and subtle bugs. You can also place this in
your slrn directory along with slrn.exe, if you wish.

2) Optionally, place slrn.exe somewhere on your PATH.

3) Set two environment variables, either in your CONFIG.SYS or else by
hand before starting slrn:

set NNTPSERVER=your.server.name
set LOGNAME=youruserid

slrn will complain and refuse to run if NNTPSERVER isn't set, and will default
to root (a Bad Idea, but an artifact of the emx library) if LOGNAME isn't set.
The latter will produce a complaint in a later release, so go ahead and set it
now.

4) Edit slrn.rc. There are comments at the top for the entries you must change
for your system, and you may wish to change others as well.

5) Place slrn.rc in a directory by itself. Run slrn from this directory. The
first time you do anything that saves a file, the directory you specified in
slrn.rc will be created; it's best to make that a subdirectory of this one. If
you wish to use a signature file, place it in this directory as well and call
it signatur.txt, or else change the location in the slrn.rc file.

6) Enjoy!

The OS/2 version of slrn will use the full extent of the OS/2 command window
it's run in. You can do "mode co80,50", and it will use all 50 lines. You can
also specify a wider window and it will use the extra width. (If you use a wide
window, please take care that your postings don't exceed 80 characters per
line. The net will thank you.)

This version will also always use the colors specified in the slrn.rc file; you
don't have to use the -C command line switch to enable them. You might wish to
play with the colors; the default settings are pretty, but hard for me to read
(but then, I'm partially colorblind, too.) Because color capability is assumed,
mono statements in the slrn.rc file are processed but have no effect.

Mailing a reply to a message, or forwarding a message, works now. You must
modify the sendmail.cf file supplied with the binary distribution to give it
the name of the host that processes your outgoing SMTP mail, your fully-
qualified domain name (to set your email address with), and the directory
that sendmail is to use to queue the outgoing message. Use the e.exe editor
supplied with OS/2, or another editor that does not mangle tabs, to edit
this file, or else sendmail will act very strangely. The EPM editor is NOT
suitable for this task. Alternatively, if you have a working sendmail.cf for
another application, you can tell slrn to use that by changing the path name
on the sendmail_command line in slrn.rc.

You may use the U key to start a Web browser (by default, WebExplorer, which
is assumed to be installed on your PATH) to browse the first URL encountered
in the current posting. Be careful when doing this: WebExplorer is known to
be less than stable, and running two copies at the same time locked up my
system a few times while playing with this. The supplied slrn.rc uses the
command "start explore %s", which will cause WebExplorer to run at the same
time as slrn. If you wish to make sure you only run one copy at a time, you
can remove the word "start" from the line, which will suspend slrn until you
exit the browser.

slrn now does base64 decoding of MIME messages itself, so I don't have to go
get the OS/2 version of metamail and make it work. Yay!


The following are known bugs and restrictions of the OS/2 version in this
release:

Bad Things happen if you don't change the defaults in slrn.rc to fit your
machine. Don't skip this step. I plan to squash those bugs, but my defaults
may not fit your situation.

The program does not depend on running on an HPFS file system, but the
suggested default file name when saving a file is almost never suitable for
FAT file systems. I'll try to come up with a more sensible default name to
remove this one. Other files are FAT-friendly, though. (This wasn't entirely
true in the 0.8.6 OS/2 version; the newsgroups description file defaulted to
jnews.rc.dsc. If you have this file, you'll need to rename it to ds-jnews.rc.)

The error message "Unable to find a fully qualified hostname." means that slrn
was unable to figure out the host name of your PC, or that it found one but
it wasn't a valid fully-qualified domain name (it didn't contain at least one
".", or contained a "(" or "@"). The best approach to fixing this is to make
sure that the HOSTNAME environment variable contains the host name part of
your machine's name (for example, my PC at home is yakko.nwpros.com, so I put
set HOSTNAME=yakko
in my CONFIG.SYS file) and that your TCP/IP settings have the name of your
domain (in my case, nwpros.com) in the settings notebook. (The location of
this setting varies depending on which dialer you use, or if you have Warp
Connect installed.)

Please drop me email if you discover other bugs; I'll try to squash them and
pass the fixes along. Good luck with slrn for OS/2!

Jay Maynard, jmaynard@nwpros.com