Synchronize USENET news progress with MT-Newswatcher

Jan 06, '04 08:56:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

The problem with reading news (USENET) on several machines is that the articles you've read get out of sync and you have to manually mark them read on computer A if you read them on computer B. If you're like me and use MT-NewsWatcher, there is a good way to work around this -- use the .newsrc file!

.newsrc is just a plain text file that usually resides in your home directory and serves as subscription list for news groups. It's very common in older UNIX usenet applications. But MT-NewsWatcher uses the exact same format. So here is what you do:

  1. Turn on FTP Sharing on either computer A or B.
  2. Tell MT-NewsWatcher to upload your group list to the FTP computer with Special -> Send Group List To Host... and check the "Automatically get/put newsrc"
  3. Open up MT-NewsWatcher on the other computer and tell it to Special -> Get Group List From Host... and also to automatically do so.
  4. Enjoy!
MT-NewsWatcher will now get the .newsrc from the other computer (or itself if you're using it on the FTP machine) and put it back when you quit. The .newsrc file will always be up to date. Some thoughts, though:
  1. Don't read the news on both machines at the same time; the one who quits last will overwrite the other when uploading.
  2. The computer with FTP Sharing on can have "Computername.local" as hostname in the "Get group list from host..." dialog which will fetch the file even if you don't have a connection (allthough you won't be able to actually read news - duh) :)
  3. The Filters file and the preferences of the app won't be synced. Perhaps you can utilize this hint for keeping them synchronized?
[robg adds: I have not tested this one...]

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