Re: does anyone even use usenet

On 8/12/2024 8:00 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Mon, 12 Aug 2024 08:29:14 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:
 

On 8/11/2024 7:07 PM, Mike S. wrote:

On Sun, 11 Aug 2024 12:43:58 -0400, Danoxary <dbz.1991@aol.com> wrote:
>

What client are you guys using to write on here? What service?

>
Agent for text because its the best for that. My service is
Newsleecher and they have their own client for binaries.

>
I've been considering purchasing Agent.  With the issues with TB I had
last week (it re-downloaded a bunch of messages, which now when I click
on it says don't exist)
>
I'm considering agent again.  Can you actually find things in it (TB is
horrible with search.  I was trying to find the thread with weird west
in it, but if I just put in weird for subject or body it doesn't find
any) and will it retain messages?

 Agent 2.x (which is absolutely ancient) had a fairly robust search
engine.
 (there was a mention of Weird West in the June 19th 'Prime Gaming'
thread, when it was one of the freebies. There were likely others, I
purge my feed of older posts fairly regularly so I don't have any
results for 'weird west' older than that).

Yes that was the one I was trying to find.  and I think I figured out the search issue is I have to set the group properties > synchronization  > select this newsgroup for offline use & download now.  That seems to actually download the messages.  'Get messages' even with 'retain all messages' selected - which also apparently is overridden by the server's retention no matter what you do.  And doesn't seem to actually retain the messages even after reading them so they should be on the local computer

I have no real idea what the modern versions of Agent are like. I've
tried their newer editions, but I just /really/ like the no-nonsense
GUI of the older versions. All the toolbars and buttons are very slim,
with very little wasted whitespace. This puts the focus on the actual
content. From what I can tell, a lot of the improvements made to Agent
over the years has been to binary support, which isn't something I'm
really interested in. Certainly not enough to pay for an upgrade.

>
I think one was Microplanet Gravity, and another Xananews.

 I've tried Microplanet Gravity... it's fine. It's -from what I
remember- a fairly good clone of Forte Agent. It didn't really offer
me anything more than what I already had, though, so I stuck with my
ancient client.
 

I'll have to give that a try. I remember liking Agent, but that was back in the early days of it, probably around the version you had.  If I buy it now it's on version 8 and am wondering if it was encrapified.  It sounds like it's got a focus on binaries and using their own servers with a subscription now, which is not what I want.  I'm not poor enough I feel it's worth the risk for sailing anymore (in my teen years yes, after my family lost everything in housing crash in the '80s)

I've tried Thunderbird as a client and... well, it works, but it felt
'messy' compared to Agent. It is like it sort of tries to force the
design philosophy of email onto Usenet, and that never felt right.
It's just something about how it displays everything I didn't like.
But it's been /years/ since that experiment, so maybe things have
changed.

I'm used to TB now, it just seems to have a lot of hidden not very intuitive options.  I'd also like it to sort by date of the first message in a thread sometimes, which I haven't been able to do, and I don't want to ever see the view that shows only a few lines from each message.
--
-Justisaur
  ø-ø
(\_/)\
  `-'\ `--.___,
   ¶¬'\( ,_.-'
        \
        ^'