Tin is a full-screen easy to use Netnews
reader. It can read news locally (i.e.,
/usr/spool/news) or remotely (rtin or
tin -r option) via a NNTP (Network News Transport
Protocol) server. It will automatically utilize nov (news
overview) style index files if available locally or via the nntp
xover command.
This is a successor to Iain Lea's version. The build-scripts auto-configure tin to a wide variety of UNIX and Posix platforms. Numerous enhancements have been made.
I contributed some portability and bug-fixes to the original (Iain Lea's version) tin. Shortly before he went offline, I was preparing a patch for auto-configuration. Managing the numerous configurations for which tin can be built is one of the two most interesting problems, from my point of view. The other (converting from the low-level screen I/O to a curses-based implementation) is something that everyone wishes someone else would do.
I completed the auto-configuration implementation for what was (in 1995) tin-unoff, a project which is run by Urs Janssen. Later, I converted the program from K&R C to ANSI C, and finally implemented a curses driver which may be used in place of the older termcap driver.
To build tin, you require an ANSI C compiler.