Introduction to slrn
slrn is a Usenet client, a newsreader that can read and respond to posts on newsgroups. It first made available in 1994 and has been under development since that time with the most recent release in 2016. The slrn manual gives the following summary of the capabilities of slrn:
slrn ('S-Lang read news') is a newsreader, i.e. a program that accesses a newsserver to read messages from the Internet News service (also known as 'Usenet'). It runs in console mode on various Unix-like systems (including Linux), 32-bit Windows, OS/2, BeOS and VMS. Beside the usual features of a newsreader slrn supports scoring rules to highlight, sort or kill articles based on information from their header. It is highly customizable, allows free key-bindings and can easily be extended using he sophisticated S-Lang macro language. Offline reading is possible by using either slrnpull (shipped with slrn) or a local newsserver (like leafnode or INN).
Installing slrn
The most recent release version of slrn is 1.0.3a which came out in 2016 and slrn users are strongly encouraged to use this version. For the most part for Linux users this version of slrn will be available from their distro's package manger and can thus be installed as is customary in the distro. Windows users and those who wish to compile their own copy of slrn can have a look at the downloads page of this site where compiling instructions and a link to a Windows version of slrn can be found.
Further Information about slrn
This web page aims to be the central access point for web based information on slrn but there are several other places to gain information about slrn. There are several newsgroups where slrn is discussed, a mailing list for S-Lang and an IRC channel for formal and informal slrn chat:
- news.software.readers: This newsgroup deals with all kinds of newsreaders, so please put "[slrn]" somewhere in the Subject header line to make your posting easy to find for other slrn users. The newsgroup is read by the slrn community and JED.
- de.comm.software.newsreader: This newsgroup corresponds to news.software.readers, but is intended for discussions in German language.
- S-Lang Mailing Lists: Details on this page to subscribing or simply browsing the mailing lists: slang-users, slang-devel and slang-interp.
- #slrn on Libera.Chat: There is an IRC channel on Libera.Chat which functions both as an informal area for general chat as well an area for specific usage questions to do with slrn. Register a nick with Libera and come and join in...
Some Acknowledgements
This website owes a debt to those who built the previous slrn website: Sven Guckes, Thomas Schultz, Felix Schüller and Matthias Friedrich. A great deal of assistance was also given by regulars of the newsgroup news.software.readers, regulars of the slrn-users mailing list and of course by the developer of slrn John E. Davis. The current website team acknowledge the debt to all of these generous people.