This file is mainly intended as a quick guide for people who already know
slrn and want to run it on Windows.  You can find descriptions on the web
that are both more comprehensive and easier to understand.  Please also
consult the rest of the documentation that comes with slrn.

Installation (Windows)
======================

The first thing you need to run slrn on Windows is a working executable.
You can either download one from the net (just follow the links on
<URL:http://slrn.sourceforge.net/>) or compile it yourself -- some notes on
how to do this can be found at the end of this file.  When you have one,
follow these steps:

1.  Copy slrn.exe to a directory in your path.

2.  Set the following environment variables:
       set NNTPSERVER=my.news.server
       set HOME=d:\home\sweet\home
       (Note: Forward slashes are also ok)

3.  Copy the file slrn.rc into the home-directory and edit it to your needs,
    it should be pretty well documented.  When entering file path names
    here, use double backslashes (\\)!

4.  The first time you start slrn, start it with the following parameters
    "slrn.exe --create", this will create a jnews.rc.  After that you can
    start it without parameters.

You should now see slrn in action.  If you actually want to work with it,
you also need an editor (if you don't have your favourite one, MS DOS edit
will work) and a program like sendsmtp that can deliver email to your mail
server (for forwards and replies).  If you want to read your news offline,
you either need a binary of slrnpull or a local server as well.

Compiling slrn for Windows
==========================

The current version of slrn has been reported to compile with recent
versions of MinGW and Watcom.  The Cygwin environment is now treated like a
Unix system (see INSTALL.unix) - note that you need slang >= 1.4.5 for this.
If you needed to patch the sources to get it to work with your favourite
compiler, please send me the diffs so they can go into the next official
release.

As I never worked with Watcom myself, the following instructions apply to
MinGW only.

1. Compiling S-Lang:

The S-Lang library is required to build slrn.  It's available from
<URL:ftp://space.mit.edu/pub/davis/slang>. Unpack the tarball into a
directory called "slang".  In the "src" subdirectory, execute

> .\mkfiles\mkmake WIN32 MINGW32 < mkfiles\makefile.all > makefile

in a DOS box.  Then, simply type "make".

2. Compiling slrn:

Unpack slrn into a directory at the same level as "slang" and go to the
"src" subdirectory.  You can edit slrnconf.h to play with the compile time
options if you want.  Now you can run

> make -f makefile.g32

If you want to compile slrnpull as well, do

> make -f makefile.g32 slrnpull.exe