Hello everyone.

Long story short: I want to make a NNTP client in Python.

Q: How is that better than slrn/tin/whatever else?
A: It's not.

Q: Then, why?
A: Because android currently has 0 (yes, zero) usable NNTP apps, and I
want one. At least it has termux, which supports python really well. As
for slrn/tin, I have no idea how to install them under termux.

There's this library called pynntp that looks pretty good, also I know
python and tried curses (it was a stupid little snake game, but anyway),
so this looks as my last chance to have net news in my phone.

At first I thought that I may use Kivy library (or is it framework, I
have no idea) and build a full .APK app with GUI, but their official instructions (that are to use a tool called buildozer) don't work for
me, I'm getting some kind of compilation errors while trying to compile
a simple hello world app copied from their website, so no luck there too.

I don't think I can do this alone, but with a little help I think I
could try.

Thoughts, anyone?
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Well, if anyone is interested you can find me on IRC (both tilde.chat
and libera.chat, nickname is same as here), but I tried some other
options and turns out termux runs neomutt really well, also I could
compile tin (but I couldn't fin a wat to make it cache news for offline reading) and slrn (with slrnpull/ssl support).

I'm not used to slrn at all and I guess sometimes it's a bit weird (by
default it deletes all read messages, so I guess I'll have to set it to
never mark articles as read, etc.), but for now I see no point in making
my own nntp client anymore. For now.

If I ever want to have a «pet project», or just want to do some casual coding, I might come back to this idea, but the problem of having a
working news reader on android (using termux) seems to be solved for
now.
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On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 20:59:09 +0600
vort3 <vort3@tilde.club> wrote:

Hello everyone.

Long story short: I want to make a NNTP client in Python.

That┤s so much work, you probably have no idea. :) Wanna a saner
project? Write an NNTP server.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Patricia Ferreira <pferreira@example.com> writes:

That´s so much work, you probably have no idea. :) Wanna a saner
project? Write an NNTP server.

Simpler NNTP server? I heard about one a few days ago, but that cannot
peer with neighbours. That kills all the fun, then even mailing lists
would be a more potent medium.
--
I do not bite, I just want to play.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Fri, 08 Mar 2024 00:58:27 +0042
yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

Patricia Ferreira <pferreira@example.com> writes:

That┤s so much work, you probably have no idea. :) Wanna a saner
project? Write an NNTP server.

Simpler NNTP server? I heard about one a few days ago, but that cannot
peer with neighbours. That kills all the fun, then even mailing lists
would be a more potent medium.

An NNTP server with no peering is actually an arbitrary number of
mailing lists---just better. A non-networked NNTP works very well for
a community of clients.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Patricia Ferreira <pferreira@example.com> writes:

An NNTP server with no peering is actually an arbitrary number of
mailing lists---just better. A non-networked NNTP works very well for
a community of clients.

But in that case mailing lists might be even easier. Or even shared or
public IMAP folders.
--
I do not bite, I just want to play.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2024-03-07, Patricia Ferreira <pferreira@example.com> wrote:

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 20:59:09 +0600
vort3 <vort3@tilde.club> wrote:

Hello everyone.

Long story short: I want to make a NNTP client in Python.

That´s so much work, you probably have no idea. :) Wanna a saner
project? Write an NNTP server.

You know what is weird? I was checking for news almost every day and
today (three months later) is the first time I see that there was an
answer to my post (oh I'm sorry, it's an "article").

Anyway, writing a NNTP server might be a good idea, but there's no fun
in NNTP without peering. It could work if I had a bunch of people that
post news to me, like a small community of people I like to share news
with, but I don't have a community like that.

So, I still want a good NNTP client.
slrn is *almost* good, but it's just not there on an android device…

--- Synchronet 3.19b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On Tue, 25 Jun 2024 13:48:39 -0000 (UTC)
vort3@tilde.team wrote:

On 2024-03-07, Patricia Ferreira <pferreira@example.com> wrote:

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 20:59:09 +0600
vort3 <vort3@tilde.club> wrote:

Hello everyone.

Long story short: I want to make a NNTP client in Python.

That´s so much work, you probably have no idea. :) Wanna a saner
project? Write an NNTP server.

You know what is weird? I was checking for news almost every day and
today (three months later) is the first time I see that there was an
answer to my post (oh I'm sorry, it's an "article").

Anyway, writing a NNTP server might be a good idea, but there's no fun
in NNTP without peering. It could work if I had a bunch of people that
post news to me, like a small community of people I like to share news
with, but I don't have a community like that.

You´re right. You need friends to enjoy an NNTP server. And hopefully they´re programmers so that they can appreciate the work you´ve done.

So, I still want a good NNTP client.
slrn is *almost* good, but it's just not there on an android device…

But it´s so much work to a good NNTP client. You´re in for a lot of
trouble. Wishing you the best of your work!
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2024-07-31 05:50, Patricia Ferreira wrote:

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023 20:59:09 +0600
vort3 <vort3@tilde.club> wrote:

So, I still want a good NNTP client.
slrn is *almost* good, but it's just not there on an android device…

But it´s so much work to a good NNTP client. You´re in for a lot of trouble. Wishing you the best of your work!

I became interested in Godot recently (FOSS game engine), it has a
syntax that is almost the same as Python, so I can work with that. And
it's easy to build interfaces in Godot, it has templates for exporting projects to Windows/Linux/Mac/Android. And Godot can be used for apps
too, not just games.

So I guess for anyone with a Python knowledge that wants to make an
android app, easier route is to use Godot instead of Python, build UI
visually using ready made components (buttons and other elements), and
then script them in GDScript (the language Godot uses).

If I ever come back to the idea of making a NNTP android app, I'll try
Godot.

--- Synchronet 3.19b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

Sorry if I posted the same thing twice, I use thunderbird on my laptop
and sometimes posts I wrote just disappear, and then I don't even know
if they were sent or not.

Had to copy paste and post a follow up again (also I think I messed up
the formatting, but I think nobody cares).

--- Synchronet 3.19b-Linux NewsLink 1.113

On 2024-07-31, vort3 <vort3@tilde.club> wrote:

Sorry if I posted the same thing twice, I use thunderbird on my laptop
and sometimes posts I wrote just disappear, and then I don't even know
if they were sent or not.

Had to copy paste and post a follow up again (also I think I messed up
the formatting, but I think nobody cares).

No problem
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Linux NewsLink 1.113