Quick info for Newsclip and STRN
--------------------------------
Newsclip is a very flexible filtering/scoring language for USENET
articles written by Brad Templeton.  It is based on the C language, and
is in fact a combination of a Newsclip-to-C translator and a C library
for Newsclip programs.

Where to get Newsclip sources.
	FTP the distribution from ftp.clarinet.com  It is in
/sources/nc.tar.Z, and is about 260K (compressed).

	Newsclip is supported through the generalized news filter
interface by Brad Templeton and Eric Raymond.  The "filtpipe.c" file
is an implementation of that interface, and should be included in the
distribution kit.  The "NEWSFILTER" symbol controls compilation of the
filtering code, and is defined by default.  If you wish to try
Newsclip, do the following:

	* Make a Newsclip binary (with ncc).  See the Newsclip
documentation for more instructions.
	* Set the environment variable NCLIP to point to the binary.
Use the full path and include the binary name (like "/u3/caadams/nclip").
	* Do one of the following:
	    o Add the command "newsclip on" to your scorefile(s)
	      (add it to a scorefile that will be executed for the
		group(s) you wish to test)
	    o While in STRN, at article level, type the following:
	      "! newsclip on
		... and it will turn on newsclip and rescore.
	* You can use "newsclip off" to turn off newsclip filtering.


Communicating with a NewsClip program's command procedure:
	At article level, the keys: "'n" (single quote followed by
the n key) will send the rest of the line to the Newsclip command
procedure.  Note that the sample command procedure (in the Newsclip
distribution) expects a "T" at the front of the text which STRN does
not provide.  One can either rewrite the sample or type "'nT<text>...".

	Scoring with Newsclip takes longer than the built-in
scoring, especially over NNTP connections (since Newsclip filters the
whole article while the built-in scoring uses only header lines.)

More documentation should follow later.  Feel free to contact me
(caadams@access.digex.net) for more information on using Newsclip.

[I don't use Newsclip currently because I tend to use an author-based
approach to scoring.  I can see some situations where Newsclip could
be useful, however.  Since strn saves scores, the extra processing
does not have to be done often.]
