Please help me choose a newsreader

[clanmackay]

I really like Pan. But there are two very important functions that (I believe) are unavailable: SSL sessions and the ability to automatically check for new messages at intervals (and do something about it)

My ideal newsreader would have the following properties

* GUI
* Threading at least as clever as Pan's
* Support for secure news server connections
* Built-in NZB support
* Ability to check for new messages at configurable intervals, and when a new message is found, the ability to execute a system command (or at least play a sound)
* Effective keyboard bindings, preferably configurable
* Different profiles (or at least sigs) for different groups
* Fast searching (regexp support in that search would be dreamy)
* Ability to respond to messages by email within the application
* GPLed

If these options are not united in a single program, could some operations be factored out, such as a cronjob to check for new messages, a separate NZB downloader, etc.?

Thanks,

Joshua McGee
http://www.mcgees.org

(Yes, I asked something similar before, but my question is more focused now, and I'm resubmitting it)

[clanmackay]

Oh, and: if everything except the GUI is available in a text-based reader, I'm not absolutely wedded to the requirement

[oldos2er]

Look here: http://littlergirl.googlepages.com/newsreaders.html

I don't know if you'll find a newsreader with all the features you want, but good luck anyway. Let us know what program(s) you decide on.

[clanmackay]

Look here: http://littlergirl.googlepages.com/newsreaders.html

Thank you for that, I'll be sure to report on my findings.

I am very curious if anybody has devised an ideal shared-burden arrangement with two or more pieces of software. It is seeming, more and more, that no single program has complete coverage of my desired features (but it's a bit premature to state that as fact, as there are more pointers on the list you provided than I had yet found.)

Yeah, I know that "all things for all people" leads to emacs-style bloatware and Perl-style complexity. But I like emacs and Perl. I'm startlingly willing to use complex, inefficient software, because of the sheer cheap power available these days. Quite a change from when I would spend days hand-optimizing HP calculator programs. If the difference is ten milliseconds compared to twenty, I just can't be buggered any longer -- and my code elegance is suffering as a result (my productivity, however, increases.)