News While U Sleep 1.2, a HyperCard stack.

I wrote this stack to solve a specific problem, and you only need it if you
have exactly the same problem, namely:

* You are connected to the Internet via MacTCP;
* You have a NewsServer from which you like to read news; but...
* You cannot check the news every day, and items are only held temporarily,
so that...
* You would like to have all the items from certain newsgroups downloaded
as textfiles to your computer automatically, periodically, so you don't
miss any news;
* But the NewsReader you normally use cannot be made to do this for you.

This stack handles the problem, except for the "periodically" part, by
which I mean, it is up to you to arrange somehow for the stack to run. I
use QuicKeys, which starts the stack up every night at 3 am; you will need
to devise a mechanism of your own. But once the stack is started up, it
will:

For every card:
* connect to the newsserver named on that card;
* download all new items of the newsgroup named on that card, individually,
as textfiles, to the folder named on that card;
* disconnect from the newsserver;
then Quit.

Thus I can come in to work the next morning, or the next month, and not
have missed any news items from my favorite newsgroup(s); they are all
waiting for me as textfiles on my hard disk.

Warning (of a sort): this stack is slowwwwww! It is great for unattended
use at night when you aren't using your computer for anything else (hence
the name), but sitting there watching it run is boring.

I cannot take much credit (or blame, really) for very much at all about
this stack. The TCP XCMDs are by Apple Computer, and most of the script
programming comes from the Georg Gollmann's classic StackedNews stack. All
I did was adapt his scripts for my own use. I did fix a few minor bugs of
his but this was trivial.

What's new in this version: fixed a couple of bugs, and I think it now runs
okay under HC 2.1, though 2.2 is suggested since that's what I use. The
stack has run every night on my computer for a year now with no problem.

Path: /www/exparrot/files.tidbits.com/info-mac/comm/inet/news-while-u-sleep-12-hc.hqx