Re: 10 years of slang-2.2.4 and four years of slrn-1.0.3a

Hi Sven,

Good to hear from you again!

On Mon, Apr 05, 2021 at 02:35:40AM +0200, Sven Guckes wrote:
> next week on 2021-04-11 will be the tenth anniversary of
> slang-2.2.4.

Happy birthday slang :)

> in 2003 i had very much hoped that all those nice features of mutt
> and slrn would come together:
> https://www.guckes.net/misc/mutt_vs_slrn.html
> 
> but it seems the development had always been put off by the next
> release of slrn-2 somehow.

My 2 favourite Linux applications. mutt of course continues to be
actively, even frenetically, developed while slrn has reached a
contented and stable state perhaps?

BTW you have a 404 on the link at the base of this page for the
wishlist, it redirects to https://slrn.info/wishlist.html from
Sourceforge as planned but the page no longer exists.

> i would still rather read mailing lists with slrn through gmane.org
> than to subscribe to them all, gathering tons of copies of messages
> in my account.

I have always meant to get that set but last time I looked mailing
lists seemed to have reached the same state of stagnation that has
afflicted irc and Usenet :(.

> is anyone working on slrn at all?  am i missing any updates, maybe?
> perhaps it has been forked?

Last update to slrn in git was actually Sunday January 17th 2021 so
pretty recent. A total of 5 updates after the release of Version
1.0.3.

> besides, my first newsreader - nn - could aggregate newsgroups into
> one group and allowed to proceed with "select messages first, then
> start reading", advancing from one message to message with just
> typing SPACE.  i really loved that.  always wondered whether slrn
> might have it, too.
> 
> wish it were so with some many other programs, like when reading
> twitter, all those search results from google (duckduckgo..
> whatever), or when reading RSS feeds (newsbeuter->newsboat).

I remember when Usenet was a little busier having a go at nn, mind you
I believe that the last release of nn was back in 2006. nn did not
capture me at all but by then I was well and truly an slrn user :).

> anyway.. what is the status of slrn?  should we consider it dead now
> - or merely having "rested for a decade"?  will slrn-1.0.3a the last
> release?  [it is of 2016-10-24, four years ago]

My suspicion is that JED would still be willing to patch up any small
issues that appear, as demonstrated by the 5 or so updates currently
available on top of the official release version of slrn. Perhaps like
all of us he views the accelerating decline of Usenet with some
sadness...

> by the way:  where is John E. Davis?  there haven't been many
> messages of him on this slrn-user list lately: 2012:8 2013:5 2014:0
> 2015:5 2016:5 2017:2 not one message in 2018,2019,2020,2021.. :-/
> well, i hope he is okay, just resting. :-)

I have had the odd exchange of emails with JED, most recently when we
organised the slrn web site away from Sourceforge to the new domain:
slrn.info. Now directly under JED's control although I am sneakily
glad my original design for the site stays in place :). Still waiting
for that cursed domain name sniper to tire of defacing the old site at
slrn dot org. Sigh...

> i just checked slrn.info again and its archives for the mailing
> lists.. and found this post by JED: page:
> http://lists.jedsoft.org/lists/slang-users/2021/ link:
> http://lists.jedsoft.org/lists/slang-users/2021/0000028.html so i
> guess he's alive (and hopefully well). :-)
> 
> sidenote: the archives of slang-devel and slang-interp do not seem
> to be open to the public, though:
> http://lists.jedsoft.org/lists/slang-interp/
> http://lists.jedsoft.org/lists/slang-devel/

I confess that I don't follow those although this mailing list still
gets a trickle of mail from slrn enthusiasts.

> all that said: i have been a fan of slrn and used it for quite some
> years.  would like to see it revived and used by many more people.

For many more years than myself I know! I still use slrn daily
although I now use it exclusively on a Windows 10 Virtual Machine.
Still keeping this page alive:

https://www.andrews-corner.org/slrn-windows.html

and waiting for even a single user to follow my lead :). What is
really needed I suspect is for Usenet itself to come back to life and
I know this is very, very unlikely to happen...

Nice to 'see' you again though!

All the best,

Andrew
-- 
You think that's air you're breathing now?