NewsGreed 0.4.5 http://www.geocities.com/NewsGreed/ Copyright (C) 2002 - 2004 Leonardo Ferracci A few notes about NewsGreed =========================== NewsGreed is a simple application intended to automate the bulk download of binary files from newsgroups; among its features you can find: -definition of filters to select the artticles to download (based on article subject); -selection of file types (extensions) too download; -automatic reassembly of files split bettween different articles and different newsgroups; while its current limitations are: -NewsGreed is unable to resume a downloaad stopped because of user intervention or network error; -missing support for authentication withh username and password (for servers which require it). What's new in version 0.4.4 - 0.4.5 =========================== Just some bug fixes! What's new in version 0.4.3 =========================== -Added the feature of listing the articlles of a newsgroup directly from the Newsgroup dialog; -Added the feature of downloading a singgle article or a single split file directly from the Article List dialog; -And of course the usual bug-fixes... What's new in version 0.4.2 =========================== Bug fixes here and there... What's new in version 0.4.1 =========================== Increased processing speed in Article list dialog window. What's new in version 0.4 =========================== Bug fixes: -Resolved a case of malfunction with MIMME messages. Emproved user interface features: -Added a dialog window which lists all nnewsgroups available on the selected news server; -Added a dialog window which lists all aarticles posted in the selectd newsgroup, with optional view of articles containg split files only. What's new in version 0.2.2 =========================== -Added the feature of explicitely choosiing a working directory and a download directory. -Some bugs fixes here and there (thank yyou Thomas!); -First localized version: Italian. What's new in version 0.2.1 =========================== -Now NewsGreed REALLY works with yEnc poosts!!! The relevant bug with multipart decoding has been fixed; -Fixed some not correct interactions witth the newsgroup dialog. What's new in version 0.2 ========================= With respect to version 0.1, you can find the following improvements in NewsGreed 0.2: -User interaction: -A more comfortable window and dialog positioning; -Confirm dialogs added when stopping jobs and closing application with download job running (this avoids the risk of accidentally aborting a huge file download just for a single click in the wrong place!); -A command line version (with a limited set of options) has been added; -Newsgroup support: -Added the feature of searching more than one single newsgroup for every job - so if some parts of a file are missing in a certain newsgroup but that same file is cross-posted in another newsgroup, the likelyhood of downloading the complete file increases; -Supported encodings: -Added MIME/Base64 encoding support; -Added a very quick and dirty support for yEnc. NewsGreed Manual ================ 0. Requirements NewsGreed is a program written in Java: you need JDK or JRE 1.3.0 or higher installed on your machine to run it. 1. Installation No particular installation procedure is required: just copy the NewsGreed.jar file in the working directory you wish to use with the application. 2. Launching the program You can launch NewsGreed in two ways: -from the command line, move to the direectory (folder) where you copied the NewsGreed.jar file and then type: java -jar NewsGreed.jar -from your graphic interface, double-cliick the NewsGreed.jar icon (this should work at least for Win and Solaris). 3. Setting up parameters When the NewsGreed GUI shows up, press the Server button to set the news server parameters (address and port): these parameters should be provided by your ISP (for example: server news.myisp.com, port 119). Then press the Newsgroup button to show the Newsgroup parameters dialog windows, which allows you to choose the parameters of the download job: -select the newsgroups to scan using thee Newsgroup Name list; -if you right-click on an item in the Neewsgroup Name list while pressing the SHIFT key, a pop-up menu will allow you to show the list of the articles in the relevant newsgroup; -if you want to add a new newsgroup to tthe list, click on the Add another newsgroup... button and enter the newsgroup name in the dialog window; -press the Choose newsgroup... button too list all newsgroups available on the selected server - this will show the Newsgroup list dialog window, please see 3.2 for a detailed explanation of its features; -the string to search for in the subjectt of the articles found in the newsgroup: only the binary articles whose subject matches that string will be downloaded - you can also specify a list of strings by separating single strings with a comma (",") and NO SPACES: thus all binary articles whose subject matches at least one of the strings will be downloaded. Finally, if you leave this field empty ALL binary articles will be downloaded; -the file extensions you wish to downloaad (again, a list of strings separated by commas and NO SPACES), for example "mp3,midi" or "jpeg,jpg,gif"; if you leave this field empty all files (with ANY extension) will be downloaded. -choose if you want to download files whhich are split between two or more articles (article size limits on most news servers make this solution necessary when posting larger files such as sounds and videos) or files posted in a sigle binary article (this happens typically for pictures). -if you choose to download a file which is split between two or more articles, it is possible that not all parts can be found in the newsgroups you selected; to download anyway all the file parts which it is possible to find, you can check the "Download fragments of corrupt files" box. 3.1 Settings dialog NewsGreed allows you to choose which directory it should use as working directory (where article lists of single newsgroups, divided by server, are stored for easier and quicker retrieval) and which as download directory (where all binary files downloaded are stored). By default, NewsGreed uses the directory from which it is launched as its working directory, and stores every binary file in a directory with the same name as the newsgroup it was downloaded from. To change such behavior, click the Settings button in the bottom of NewsGreed main window: a dialog window will appear, which you can use to set the working/download directory used by the application. 3.2 Newsgroup list dialog The Newsgroup list dialog lists all newsgroups available on the currently selected server; if no info is locally available, you will be asked to download the list from the server. The main features of this dialog are: -the Find... (and Find up/Find down) butttons allow to search for a newsgroup whose name contains a certain string; -the Update button retrieves newly addedd newsgroups from the server (as of NewsGreed 0.4 this feature is not yet implemented!); -the list contains all the newsgroups avvailable on the server; -the Move to newsgroup search list buttoon adds the selected newsgroup(s) to the list of newsgroups from which to download files (in the Newsgroup parameters dialog); -the View articles in the selected newsggroup button shows the Article list dialog window, which lists all articles available in the currently selected newsgroup - please see 3.3 for further details. 3.3 Article list dialog The Article list dialog lists all articles posted in a given newsgroup; the main features of this dialog are: -the Find... (and Find up/Find down) butttons allow to search for an article whose subject contains a given string; -the Update button retrieves newly addedd articles from the server; -the list contains the subjects of the aarticles posted in the newsgroup; -if you right-click on an item in the arrticle list while pressing the SHIFT key, a pop-up menu will allow you to download the single article or (if split files only are displayed - see below) the whole split file; -the radio buttons allow to view all artticles in the newsgroup, or just the articles which contain split files, or just the articles which contain split files with NO PART missing; -if you select an article from the list,, its subject will be copied in the textfield; -the Add to search string button allows to add the text in the textfield to the search string in the Newsgroup parameters dialog. 4. Starting and stopping download Once parameters are set up, press the Start button to begin the automatic download: first the articles in the newsgroup will be scanned (retrieving info from the server when needed for newly posted articles), then the actual binary file download begins: two bars show the progress in the overall download process and in the current file download. If you wish to stop the download, just press the Stop button. 5. Using the command line version A limited-feature command line version of NewsGreed has been added to the .jar since version 0.2; to extract it, type: jar -xfv NewsGreed.jar *.class and then launch it using: java clNewsGreed - [] The meaning of the parameters is as follows: -s means search for split files; -w means search for files posted in a siingle article; is the NNTP server address; is the NNTP server port; is a comma-separated list of newsgroups to search; is an optional comma-separated list of search strings (to be matched against article subjects).