newsbin.com

Just want to tell my experience with Wine and Newsbin.
First, the good news: It is running just fine now. Amazingly, even the thumbnails are displayed properly during download.

When changing the paths for "Download" data and "Application Data",
make sure that these directories are fully accesible by the user running
Wine. It seems Newsbin does not check whether the directories can
be written to, and it just won't store the list of newsgroups, etc.
It would be nice to have a simple checking done in Newsbin and deliver
an error message if writing in these directories was not succesful.

The MOTD display is not working under Wine. There are some messages that it requires ActiveX and one can load ActiveX and install that as a Mozilla extension. The program will even ask you whether you want to download and install the file, otherwise it could be installed beforehand, get the download from http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/mozilla.htm . However, once this is installed, Newsbin will still deliver an error message when MOTD is started and an empty window pops up. Fortunately, MOTD can be disabled after registering Newsbin.

There are still some issues with the display of the menus and the trees of the newsgroups, but one can find some workaround. For instance, dragging newsgroups in particular folders won't get displayed instantaneously, one has to use the expand function (clicking on +,-) to see that the move was successful.

I am still looking for a good native Linux binary newsreader, and I am hoping that Newsbin would be ultimately available also under Linux. Unfortunately, the binary newsreader for KDE, klibido, won't compile in my Gentoo Linux 2006.0.

I have seen a strange thing about the Application Data directory. One can choose a non-default directory for Application Data with the Newsbin options. The non-default directory will be created with the entries

AutoRAR.txt
Chunks
GROUPS.DB3
Images
RPB.db3
Spool

and the list of newsgroups is stored in that directory.
However, Newsbin will continue to use another directory in
.wine/drive_c/Newsbin with the following entries:

AutoRAR.txt
Images
Newsbin.nbi
RPB.db3
Chunks
Newsbin.bak
Newsbin.nbi:Version:$DATA
Spool

I am not sure whether that is a Wine specific Newsbin bug or feature?

I have moved all these files to the non-default Application Data directory and created a symbolic link to the .wine/drive_c/Newsbin directory.
To make the behavior consistent in Newsbin, I am now using the directory
C:\Newsbin as the Application Data directory.

The MOTD always used to work under wine - I had disabled it, just checked it, and you seem to be correct, it's not there. It just needs that dcom package installed - poke around wine forums and you'll find it - but it definitely used to need that. I'm quite sure I have it installed. Things like getting Notepad to read posts works fine(I use that too), but again you need to actually find and install Notepad. wine forums point to this sort of stuff.

Not sure what to say about the paths thing - I've beta tested a fair bit and to be perfectly honest have lost track of what exactly happens with virgin installs. I always install to the default suggested location anyway, since wine is all virtual I'm less anal about locations. However, there's a few oddities which have cropped up, I'm fairly sure it's not Newsbin per se, but wine not being completely up-to-date with XP "standards" - stuff like where user profiles are stored, etc. I think I made a link in there somewhere. Anyway, the only outstanding problem I seem to have now is that "Newsbin Download" dir being made in $HOME.

DT

Thank you for the reply, I am glad to know that somebody is also checking whether Newsbin Pro is working under Wine.

The display of MOTD is a rather strange issue, and not particularly important. MOTD is working ok from the help menu (it is displayed through the default browser in the Linux system), but it won't work at startup of Newsbin Pro under Wine. It seems the program uses two different methods while trying to do the same thing. MOTD at startup may not be important, and for me it does not justify installing DCOM98 from Microsoft. For everything else, the Wine implementation of DCOM seems to be good enough.

The problem with the paths may be similar in a sense that Newsbin may use two different methods for accessing the Application Data directory. It works correctly for creating the Application Data directory initially and for writing the Newsgroups file, but it then also creates at the wrong location the directory with spool and chunk subdirectory and the *.nbi configuration file.

I also have some good news: The integration of Newsbin Pro with QuickPar also works perfectly under Wine and is very useful. One has to be careful what one is doing there, and I could not find any documentation though. When QuickPar was combining a multiset file, I was trying the decode function subsequently, which caused the entire file to be erased..... the file was lost and no longer recoverable ....

The MOTD on startup uses IE internally. Accessing the MOTD or any other web link form the Help menu uses your default browser.