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'''A News''' is the common name a program originally known simply as "news," the first widely distributed program for serving and reading [[Usenet]] [[newsgroups]]. The program, written at [[Duke University]], was released on a tape given out at the [[June]] [[1980]] [[USENIX]] conference held at the [[University of Delaware]]. Steve Daniel from Duke offered a presentation on the then-new Usenet network and invited attendees to join. |
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'''A News''' is an old application for slow [[dial-up]] [[UUCP]]-based network communication developed at [[Duke University]] and the [[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]]. It provided basic functionality found today in a [[news server]] and a [[newsreader]] and was meant to provide an alternative to [[ARPANET]] based [[mailing list]]s. A News was later rewritten and replaced by its successor [[B News]]. |
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The Seventh Edition of [[Unix]] included a news facility, which allowed the system operator to cause messages to be displayed to the user at login. A News (so called because each message began with "A" as a marker character) was an expansion of this facility that allowed news messages to be distributred across an arbitrary number of systems using the new [[uucp]] service. |
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In addition to the login display, news articles could be read at any time from the command line. A user could also post new messages to the local machine (by posting to a special default newsgroup called "general") or queue it for network-wide transmission by placing it in a public group such as "NET.general". |
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The software was designed primarily with announcements in mind, so the interface was extremely simple. There were no provisions built in for replying to articles over news ([[e-mail]] replies were supported), skipping over messages, or threading. Because the system was designed only with uucp in mind, posters were identified by their uucp "bang path" addresses, a feature that persists in modern Usenet. [[ARPAnet]] addressing was not supported. |
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Because Usenet grew rapidly, the limited capabilities and simplistic article storage scheme quickly made A News impractical to use. It was largely superseded by [[B News]], although some organizations continued to use it for internal communications for many years. |
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[[Image:A-News-msg-format.png|frame|center|Example of an early Usenet article. The legends in '''bold''' type are the equivalent header names in a modern Usenet article.]] |
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==External links== |
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[ftp://ftp.std.com/obi/USENET/ world.std.com FTP archive containing A News], including documentation and the original Usenet invitation. The source code will need some modification to run on a modern Unix-like system. |
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[[Category:Usenet]] |
[[Category:Usenet]] |
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Revision as of 04:27, 9 January 2005
A News is the common name a program originally known simply as "news," the first widely distributed program for serving and reading Usenet newsgroups. The program, written at Duke University, was released on a tape given out at the June 1980 USENIX conference held at the University of Delaware. Steve Daniel from Duke offered a presentation on the then-new Usenet network and invited attendees to join.
The Seventh Edition of Unix included a news facility, which allowed the system operator to cause messages to be displayed to the user at login. A News (so called because each message began with "A" as a marker character) was an expansion of this facility that allowed news messages to be distributred across an arbitrary number of systems using the new uucp service.
In addition to the login display, news articles could be read at any time from the command line. A user could also post new messages to the local machine (by posting to a special default newsgroup called "general") or queue it for network-wide transmission by placing it in a public group such as "NET.general".
The software was designed primarily with announcements in mind, so the interface was extremely simple. There were no provisions built in for replying to articles over news (e-mail replies were supported), skipping over messages, or threading. Because the system was designed only with uucp in mind, posters were identified by their uucp "bang path" addresses, a feature that persists in modern Usenet. ARPAnet addressing was not supported.
Because Usenet grew rapidly, the limited capabilities and simplistic article storage scheme quickly made A News impractical to use. It was largely superseded by B News, although some organizations continued to use it for internal communications for many years.
External links
world.std.com FTP archive containing A News, including documentation and the original Usenet invitation. The source code will need some modification to run on a modern Unix-like system.