News Pad

News Pad is NetNews (NNTP) client that runs on PalmPilot Professional and PalmIII (PalmOS2.0 or later).
News Pad can be also offline NetNews viewer.
You can get NetNews articles just with PalmPilot Pro/PalmIII and its modem!
You can use the latest version until Sep./01/1998.

June/14/98

Released News Pad Ver0.12.

- Decode MIME header.

- Display if the article body is downloaded or not.

- New dialog when disconnect.

- Some bugs are fixed.

 June/9/98

Released News Pad Ver0.11.

- English version and Japanese version are unified.

- Network timeout is changed 30min to 2min.

- Display current download status

- Alarm function when downloaded

- Added more error dialogs when header downloaded

- App preferences are unsaved.

June/4/98

Released News Pad Ver0.1J. This is japanese version. You need J-OS to use this.

June/3/98

Released News Pad Ver.0.1 for PalmPilot Professional. An article header or body is limited just 4Kbyte. More than 4Kbyte article is not displayed. Current version can not post article to server and can not sort by thread. (Future version will be supported these.)

Japanese readme

1. Download News Pad ( News Pad Ver0.12 for PalmPilot Professional (.zip)) and extract the archive.
2. Install NewsPad.prc on your PalmPilot Professional.
3. Set up your Network and Modem (if you have not done yet.).

(Select `Modem Prefs' and `Network Prefs' in `Options' menu.)
4. Select News Pad from launcher on your PalmPilot Professional.
5. Select Menu Options-NNTP Prefs and edit the properties (you have only to enter Server field and Port field on this NNTP Prefs dialog. If you want alarm when downloaded, check "Alarm when downloaded")
6. Select Menu Group-Subscribe News Group and enter your favorite news group name. You can use this menu several times and registor some news groups (max: 5 news groups).
7. Connect your PalmPilot Professional with your modem.
8. Select Menu Record-Connect. Now you can connect to NNTP server.
9. Push popup trigger and select a news group you want to download.
10. Select Menu Record-Download Article Headers and push ok button. Then input how many articles you want to download and push ok button.
11. After a few minutes silence, complete dialog may be displayed.
12. Next, Select Menu Record-Download Articles and push ok button.
13. Once again after a few minutes silence, complete dialog may be displayed.
14. Now you can read articles for this news group. Select Open square button and select an article if you want to read. Or select menu Record-Disconnect if you logout of network.

1. How can I delete some articles?

Tap Mark squere button. This is "Mark" mode.
You can mark any articles as deleted ([D]) or undeleted ([- ] or [ ]) on this mode.
If you want to delete some articles, mark articles as deleted([D]) and select menu Record-Purge Deleted.
Mark [- ] means that the article body is already downloaded.
Mark [  ] means that the article body is not downloaded yet.
 
2.  How long does it take to download articles?

For example,  it takes 3-6 minutes to downloard 200 articles (or article headers).
 
3.  How is memory usage?

For example,  I downloaded 300 articles on alt.comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, they needed about 300kbytes. (So in this case,1Kbytes/one-article) It depends on articles and headers size.
 
4.  Why can not I download article body properly?

I found some servers have bugs. When NewsPad downloads article body, it specifys Message-ID. Message-ID is allocated to each mail. It is unique number  to specify each mail all over the world.
Some servers can not reconize Message-ID for client to request article body.
So you should change news server or request the administrator for server version-up if you can not download proper article body.
 

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Hiroyuki Okamoto