XPN - X Python Newsreader 0.6.5 review

XPN - X Python Newsreader project is a graphical newsreader written in Python with the GTK+ toolkit

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Antonio Caputo

0

XPN - X Python Newsreader project is a graphical newsreader written in Python with the GTK+ toolkit. I started writing it because I was learning Python language and working on a real project keeps your attention high.

XPN is distributed with the GPL licence, you'll found a copy of the licence inside the XPN archive.

An interesting characteristic of XPN is the complete portability. I use it a lot on Linux and Windows, however XPN should work wherever Python and GTK+2 work.

With XPN you can read/write articles on the Usenet with a good MIME support (better than some well known newsreaders).

XPN can operate with all the most diffuse charset starting from US-ASCII to UTF-8. When you edit an article XPN automatically chooses the best charset, however is always possible to override this choice.

There also other useful features like scoring, filtered views, random tag-lines, external editor support, one-key navigation, ROT13, spoiler char ...

Here are some key features of "XPN X Python Newsreader":
On-Line/Off-Line Mode

XPN has been for a long time an on-line only newsreader, now it's changed. Starting from 0.2.5 I added the read articles storing, and starting from 0.4.0 you are able to download the whole bodies with the headers, or to mark for retrieval some articles and then download their bodies.

Note that the download is a bit slow because I haven't yet optimized this code, so the better way to use XPN is still with a local news-server, or if you have a DSL connection, directly online.

MIME Standards

With XPN you can read articles coded with quoted-printable, 7bit or 8bit. XPN is also full UTF-8 compliant, you can read and send aritcles with the UTF-8 charset.

Outgoing articles are coded with the best charset, however you can always override this choice.

Scoring

It's possible to create scoring rules (like the Hamster's ones but simpler) in order to assign a score to articles. This rule can act on this fields: From, Subject, Date, Message-ID, References, Age, Xpost, Xref, Bytes and Lines

You may also create action rules. These rules trigger an action to be applied on to the article. Possible actions are !kill (delete the article), !markread, !watch, !ignore and so on.

Action rules act on the same fields listed above plus a new field named Score, in fact action rules are always applied after scoring rules.

Multiple Layouts

Ther three different possible layouts for the main window. Probably in the future I will add more of them. You can also zoom one of the tree panes.

Colors

Articles are shown with different colors for text, quoted text and signs. You can change this colors.

Random TagLines

It's possible to automatically add a random tagline in your articles. TagLines are picked from a textfile that you can customize.

X-Face::

Starting from 0.4.5 XPN support decoding of the X-Face and Face headers. Thanks to Andrew Taylor (author of a Javascript implementation of uncompface) for helping me in translating it's module.

Internationalization

Starting from 0.4.5 release XPN supports multiple languages. I use gettext (thank to Guillame Bedot) in order to mark and extract text string from the code

If you want to translate XPN in your language just get the original strings file (xpn.pot), you'll find it inside lang directory. Translate it with a translation software like GTranslator, KBabel or POEdit and send me the result. Please use 'UTF-8' as you charset.

Requirements:
Python - ver. 2.4 or better
PyGTK - ver. 2.4.1 or better

What's New in This Release:
Now is possible to customize keyboard shortcuts
Now is possible to choose the headers to show in the article pane
Added two new layouts
Fixed several bugs