emailler/README-nntp65.md

Apple II Email and Usenet News Suite

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NNTP65.SYSTEM

Run using Closed Apple-R in EMAIL.SYSTEM

NNTP65.SYSTEM is a Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) client for the Apple II. It requires an Uthernet-II ethernet card and will not work with other interfaces without modification, because it uses the W5100 hardware TCP/IP stack.

NNTP65.SYSTEM handles downloading of news articles. Transmission is handled by NNTP65UP.SYSTEM.

Before running NNTP65.SYSTEM for the first time, be sure you have performed the basic Emai//er setup described here and have also performed the initialization specific to Usenet discussed in this page. In particular, the NEWS.SPOOL directory must have been created, otherwise NNTP65.SYSTEM will be unable to download news articles.

NNTP65.SYSTEM runs without any user interaction and performs the following tasks:

• Detect Uthernet-II.
• Obtain IP address using DHCP.
• Connect to NNTP server using parameters from first three lines of NEWS.CFG. (AUTHINFO USER and AUTHINFO PASS commands).
• For each newsgroup listed in NEWSGROUPS.CFG:
  • Issue GROUP command to select the newsgroup.
  • Parse the respond from the server which indicates the message number of the first and last messages available in the newsgroup.
  • If the article number in NEWSGROUPS.CFG is zero, set the current article number to the last available article number minus 100 (so that up to 100 articles are retrieved when the newsgroup is retrieved for the first time.) Otherwise, set the current article number to the first article number recorded in NEWSGROUPS.CFG.
  • Issue the STAT command to the NNTP server for the current article number.
  • If the article does not exist, increment the current article number and loop to the previous step.
  • For each article to be retrieved from the selected newsgroup:
    • Issue the NEXT command to the NNTP server to advance to the next article.
    • Issue to ARTICLE command to retrieve the news article, writing it to a file in the NEWS.SPOOL directory (eg: /H1/DOCUMENTS/EMAIL/NEWS.SPOOL/NEWS.1234).
  • Once all articles have been retrieved for this newsgroup, write an updated newsgroup line to the file NEWSGROUPS.NEW. This will be identical to the line read from NEWSGROUPS.CFG except with the last article number updated.
  • Copy the messages just retrieved from the NEWS.SPOOL directory to the mailbox for the newsgroup in question.
• Once all newsgroups have been retrieved, rename NEWSGROUPS.NEW to replace NEWSGROUPS.CFG.
• Issue the QUIT command to disconnect from the NNTP server.
• If NNTP65.SYSTEM was invoked from EMAIL.SYSTEM, load and run EMAIL.SYSTEM. Otherwise quit t o ProDOS.

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