
    This is version 0.8 beta 8 of PAN, a powerful and user-friendly USENET
    newsreader for GNOME.  The latest info and versions of Pan can always
    be found at <http://www.superpimp.org/>.


REQUIREMENTS

    Pan requires that you have installed gnome-libs 1.0.55 or higher.  Most
    Linux distributions already have these installed.  If you just want the
    minimum required to get Pan working, try <http://www.gnome.org/start/>,
    which contains instructions and package installations for gnome-libs.
    If you'd like to try the GNOME desktop as well, then perhaps you should
    visit <http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/>, which has a nice automatic
    installation tool.

    Note that once gnome-libs is installed, Pan can be used on non-GNOME
    desktops such as KDE, WindowMaker, OpenStep, and so on.


THE SALES PITCH

    Pan is Good for Reading News:

        * Article reading, writing, and replying via usenet or e-mail are
          supported.
        * Articles can be organized by thread.
        * Articles can be sorted by author, date, subject, or the number
          of unread children in the thread.
        * Articles can be filtered by regular expression matching,
          read/unread state, binary/text, etc.
        * Killfiles let you specify authors and threads that you never
          want to see.
        * Groups can be filtered by regular expression matching,
          subscribed/new/all, etc.
        * Article headers are cached locally for fast group loading.
        * Multiple connections are supported, so articles can be read while
          binaries are downloading.
        * Selected articles and entire groups can be downloaded in a batch
          for offline reading.
        * As of Pan 0.8.0 beta 1, Pan has passed the requirements for the
          Good Newskeeping Seal of Approval.  This is from self-evaluation
          and does not yet reflect an official blessing from the GNKSA.

    Pan is Good for Downloading Binaries:

        * Pan supports single-click decoding, opening, or saving of binary
          messages.
        * Multipart articles are automatically grouped together.
        * Nonbinary, incomplete multipart, and previously-saved messges can
          be filtered out of the article list.
        * Multiple connections are supported, so many binaries can be
          downloaded simultaneously.
        * Works with servers on standard and non-standard NNTP ports.
        * Pan has a task manager to allow the user to re-order, cancel,
          and restart download tasks.

    The rest of the sales pitch is at <http://www.superpimp.org/features.html>.


UPGRADING

    Upgrading typically requires that you do the exact same procedure as
    in the INSTALL file.

    We would recommend that if you run into any problems using this newer
    version with your previous installation, that you remove the old
    configuration files and data directories (config file is ~/.gnome/Pan
    and the data dirs are typically in ~/.pan).


INSTALLATION

    See the file 'INSTALL' for instructions.


HOW TO REPORT BUGS

    See http://www.superpimp.org/bugreport.html to report bugs.


CONTACTING THE AUTHORS

    When sending email, please put "pan" at the beginning of the
    subject line, followed by what it is regarding pan (e.g., "pan
    patch", "pan comment", "pan translation").  See the AUTHORS file
    for contact information.

LINKS

    Pan   : http://www.superpimp.org/
    GNU   : http://www.gnu.org/
    GNOME : http://www.gnome.org/
    GTK+  : http://www.gtk.org/
    Helix : http://www.helixcode.com/
    uulib : http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~fp/uudeview/
    bdb   : http://www.sleepycat.com/
