These perl scripts add several useful URL protocols and/or extensions
thereof to chimera.

news.pl		Allows reading of
                news in several modes:
		   news://server/		List groups
		   news://server/group		List articles in group
		   news://server/group/number	Read Article by number
		   news://server/messageID	Read Article by message ID

		Articles are formatted with URLs converted to links,
		including mailto and news URLs where possible.

		The last two can also have
		news posting or mail reply
		forms created by appending:
			?post			To follow up
			?post+include		To follow up and quote
			?mail			To reply via email
			?mail+include		To reply via email

		These forms call postto.pl and mailto.pl to do the
		actual distribution.

postto.pl
mailto.pl	These are nearly identical, save that mailto uses sendmail
		while postto connects directly to the NNTP server.

		When called with a GET command (usually anywhere but a form),
		these scripts return an HTML form to post a new thread to a
		newsgroup or mail a letter to an address.  The URLs are:
			postto:news.group
			mailto:person@some.where

		(Note that the latter can instead launch your favorite
		 mail program if you set the MAIL_CLIENT environment
		 variable ... the author uses "xterm -e pine")

		When called with a POST command (as in the forms generated
		by news.pl), the URL is:
			postto://server
			mailto://server
		(Though in fact the server is disregarded by mailto)
		The scripts expect four fields from the forms, HEAD, BODY,
		SIG and SIGN.  The first three are text fields, and the
		fourth is a toggle indicating whether or not to append the
		SIG text to the message.

		Failed POST requests are stored in dead.letter or dead.article
		as appropriate.

finger.pl	Just here for giggles.  The URL is:
			finger:person@some.where

show.pl		Debugging tool.  Useful to see if the request you are
		sending is what you think it is.


The following lines need to be added to your protocol file (or to your
personal ~/.chimera_protocol):

news    /usr/lib/X11/chimera/nntp.pl
mailto  /usr/lib/X11/chimera/mailto.pl
postto  /usr/lib/X11/chimera/postto.pl
finger  /usr/lib/X11/chimera/finger.pl
show    /usr/lib/X11/chimera/show.pl

(or wherever you put them)

They all assume perl is in /usr/bin.  Sendmail is assumed to be in /usr/lib.


PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE correct the default nntp server in news.pl and postto.pl It won't accept calls from off campus anyway, so don't waste our bandwidth
Variables Available to Customize the news.pl, mailto.pl and postto.pl set ========================================== MAIL_CLIENT Preferred mailto:address client (I use xterm -e pine) USER Login Name NAME Full Name HOME Home Directory HOSTNAME Name of current machine NNTPSERVER Default NNTP Server QUOTECHAR Leading Character(s) to indicate quoted text NEWSORG Organization ORGANIZATION Organization, if NEWSORG unset SIGNATURE Location of .signature file, or text of signature REPLYTO Address to direct replies to The following allow customization of the headers and attribution text a la trn: NEWSHEADER Format of Header on News Articles ATTRIB Leading line for quotations in news MAILHEADER Format of Header on Mail replies YOUSAID Leading line for quotations in Mail The above four can contain the following special characters, which are translated as follows (matches trn header definitions): %C Current Newsgoup (in dot form) %n Newsgroups list of current article %s Subject of Article, stripped of all Re:'s %R Reference list including current article %o Organization Name %N Full Name %L Login %H Current machine's full name %f Reply-To or From line of current article %i Message-ID of current article, <>'s guaranteed
Enjoy! Michael Kellen <kellen@physics.montana.edu>