Slrn
Encyclopedia
slrn is an open source
text-based news client
. It was originally developed for Unix-like
operating system
s, but is now available for many other operating systems, including Microsoft Windows
.
slrn runs through a textual user interface
and is highly customizable. It uses the S-Lang library written by the same author, John E. Davis. The slrn name derives from the use of S-Lang and its function to read news.
slrn was maintained by Thomas Schultz from 2000 to 2007, but development is now again in the hands of the original author John E. Davis. Current development focuses on better support for different character sets
and tighter integration of the S-Lang language processor. New versions named "pre-0.99" showing these new features have been made available as developer previews.
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
text-based news client
News client
A newsreader is an application program that reads articles on Usenet . Newsreaders act as clients which connect to a news server, via the Network News Transfer Protocol , to download articles and post new articles...
. It was originally developed for Unix-like
Unix-like
A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s, but is now available for many other operating systems, including Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
slrn runs through a textual user interface
Text user interface
TUI short for: Text User Interface or Textual User Interface , is a retronym that was coined sometime after the invention of graphical user interfaces, to distinguish them from text-based user interfaces...
and is highly customizable. It uses the S-Lang library written by the same author, John E. Davis. The slrn name derives from the use of S-Lang and its function to read news.
slrn was maintained by Thomas Schultz from 2000 to 2007, but development is now again in the hands of the original author John E. Davis. Current development focuses on better support for different character sets
Character encoding
A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
and tighter integration of the S-Lang language processor. New versions named "pre-0.99" showing these new features have been made available as developer previews.