Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1991 21:56:45 -0700

  nn is a menu based (point and shoot) netnews reader with a complete
  set of features to satisfy both the expert and the novice user.  Since
  its first release in Denmark in 1984 (!), in Europe in 1988, and the
  global release in June 1989, it has replaced rn and other well-known
  news readers at many sites.

  Some of the key features of nn are:

  * Menu-based article selection prior to reading the articles with the
    articles sorted according to subject and posting time.

    This significantly reduces the time spent on news reading.  No
    keystrokes are wasted on articles you don't want to read, and only
    the articles selected on the menu will be read.

  * Release 6.4 uses standard .newsrc, and can leave individual
    articles unread.

  * Digests are automatically split and presented as ordinary articles!
    You can transparently save and respond to individual sub-articles.

  * Full folder support: read, save, and delete individual articles.

  * Online help and manual.

  * Built-in unshar and patch functions.
  * Built-in uudecode function which will automatically unpack,
    concatenate, and decode multi-part postings.

  * Easy remapping of keys with advanced macro definition features.

  * Automatic kill & selection of articles based on subject or author.

  * User specified presentation sequence of news groups based on the
    news group hierarchy.

  * Whole classes of news groups can easily be unsubscribed
    permanently, e.g., talk.all and all.politics

  * Related groups can be merged and presented as a single group, e.g.
    comp.emacs and all gnu.emacs groups.

  * Blindingly fast 'search for subject'.  On my Texas S1500 system, nn
    uses less than 20 seconds to find all articles on a specific
    subject among 64000 articles in all groups!

  * News collection and presentation is extremely fast, because nn uses
    its own database on top of the standard news system.

  * In a distributed environment, the database can be shared among all
    hosts on the network.  Only one daemon is needed on the news server
    for all hosts.  This works in a heterogeneous environment as well.

  * NNTP is also supported (using a local database for speed).

  Because of the database, nn starts almost equally fast (in a few
  seconds), no matter whether you have 100 or 10000 unread articles!
  The database takes up some disk space, but dramatically improves speed
  and functionality.  The amount of disk space consumed is approx. 1Mb
  per 10000 articles.

From: Nancy McGough <nancym@ii.com>, Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0800

  Here's a comparison between nn and trn. 

  Notation
    + is an advantage
    o is neutral
    - is a disadvantage
    ? is something I don't know about

  nn 6.4.16
    + Easier macro language.
    + More powerful kill/select abilities (ANDing, ORing).
    + Faster auto killing/selecting.
    + Can split/unsplit digests.
    + Dedicated newsgroup (news.software.nn) for discussion.
    + l command for flagging (with =) and leaving an article to deal
      with it later (this is better than trn's M command which just
      returns an article as unread next time).
    + Can easily mail a copy of a followup article to the author
      you're responding to.
    + Can easily mail articles you read/post to other addresses.
    + Incredibly customizable.
    + Can easily view and organize your folders (both mail and news) with nn.
    + Can merge newsgroups.
    + Can search all (or some) newsgroups for subject and/or author.
    + Can have spell check one of the options before posting/mailing article.
    + Can set default save directory for each newsgroup that is not
      necessarily.  one of the interpreted strings (e.g., my default
      save dir for comp.editors is +vi)
    - Can only search on subject and/or author; also author is the
      "real name" .  rather than full From line
    - Macro names limited to 2 characters (as far as I can tell).
    - Does not thread (yet).
    ? More powerful macro language.

  trn 3.0
    + Newsgroup selection level is friendlier than nn's A/B
      (advance/back) commands (I like being able to see the list of
      newsgroups that I say no to).
    + True threading (uses References line).
    + Graphic view of thread ("article tree").
    + Uses NOV (new overview database) for fast searching of headers;
      also NOV is used by other newsreaders (eventually nn too).
    + Can search body of article.
    + Can search full header.
    + Can reorder subscription list from within TRN (using m).
    + Can have macro names longer than 2 characters.
    + Active participation by trn developer in newsgroup
      (news.software.readers).
    + Can modify the sort order (e.g., most recent at the top).
    + Intrinsic commands for going to root/leaf of a thread (in nn you
      need to do this with macros or a sequence of commands)
    + Intrinsic command for auto-selecting your articles.
    + Easy to change attribution line to whatever you want (using ATTRIBUTION).
    + When you post you get lots of blank headers (e.g., Followup-To)
      put into your editor.
    + Can easily mail articles you read/post to other addresses
    + Incredibly customizable.
    + Can have spell check one of the options before posting/mailing article.
    o Newsgroup (news.software.readers) for discussion but also
      contains lots of non-TRN discussion.
    - Harder macro language.

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