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News Server Information

About tin

This is a news reader that runs on a UNIX-based platform. It is a very intuitive, full screen interface that sees a hierarchical structure to facilitate the search for news articles that are interesting to the user. Generally, the topmost level is a list of the newsgroups that are currently subscribed to, the second level is the list of readable articles in the group and the lowest level is the text of a particular article that was chosen to be read.

The user generally navigates through tin using the arrow keys to choose a newsgroup or thread and the space bar to select articles to be read. This design lends itself to ease of use and ease of learning and is therefore very useful to users who are new to reading news.

Tin also supports more powerful commands that will let the user use tin more efficiently as the user becomes more familiar with the news reader. (This also allows expert users to make full use of tin right away.) This means that tin can grow to meet the needs of the user as the user becomes more adept at reading news and more aware of the newsgroups that exist that may be of interest.

Getting tin

Download a copy of tin

Configuring tin

After tin is downloaded to your machine, it must be configured for your system. This can be very simple or very complicated depending on your current set up and experience in configuring new pieces of software on your system. The basics for configuring tin are pretty standard.

1. Uncompress and untar the file if necessary.
   
   
2. Read all the README, INSTALL and TODO files. The time spent reading these files will save you time when debugging your configure. These files should give you enough information to successfully install tin on your machine. These files also provide information to changes that you should make to the makefile before you attempt to install it.
   
   
3. The make command will give you a list of the platforms that tin can be installed on.

Using tin

As mentioned above, tin is very intuitive and easy. You can basically accomplish everything by just using the arrow keys and the space bar. All of the available commands are located at the bottom of the screen for reference. Help is available at all levels through the h command in tin or in the man pages that are included with the reader.