This is the list of features that made BNR1 rather unique among the
free
news reader at the time it was first released.
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Support for multiple news servers simultaneously
. This means that you can open a newsgroup, and BNR connects to all the news
servers (which you have access to) that carry the newsgroup in question and
downloads the headers of new articles. Thus you might be able to fully download
a multi-part article even though none of the news servers has all the parts, as
long as each part can be found in at least one of the servers.
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Checking for file existence before you start downloading an article
. BNR finds existing files on your hard disk and even on your removable disks
(using a special database on your hard disk) so that you don't accidentally
download a file you already have.
-
Finding an index file to decide whether to download an image
. BNR can find and show an index file (for example, 1234hix1.jpg) when you
select an article with a filename like 1234h12.jpg and click "Find index...".
-
Plugin support
. If BNR lacks a feature you find important, you can extend the capabilities of
BNR by writing plugins.
-
Header download optimization
. To save time using a slow connection (modem, for example) BNR downloads only
the minimum amount of header data. You may even decide to leave out stuff like
article authors, article dates, etc. The only required headers are the article
subjects (so you know what the article contains), article sizes (so you know
how long the download would take) and message IDs (so BNR can match the same
article on several news servers).
-
Article download optimization
. BNR only downloads the article body, and all articles are downloaded in the
order they would expire on the news server in question. If the same article
exists on several servers, BNR will use the fastest available server.
-
Connect-on-demand
. You don't need to be connected to the news servers all the time, only while
you are downloading article headers or the articles themselves. BNR knows this,
and automatically disconnects and reconnects when necessary.
-
Caching of article headers
. You can mark a group of articles, and later decide you don't want to download
all of them now. You can disconnect from the servers and exit BNR, and when you
restart BNR at some later time, BNR will start downloading those articles you
marked for download.
-
Internal JPEG viewer
. You can doubleclick on an existing filename, and BNR will display the image.
-
Automatic multi-part article combining and completeness checking
. You don't need to manually attempt to find all the parts by looking at the
subjects, BNR does this for you. BNR also checks that all parts for the
multi-part articles are available so you can decide whether you want to
download the articles.
-
Multiple Document Interface
. BNR is a MDI software, which means you can have several views to the same
data. You can for example open the same newsgroup several times, viewing the
new articles on one window and downloaded articles on another window.
-
Newsgroup-specific settings
. Most of the settings of BNR can be made different for different newsgroups.
You might for example want to download JPEG images to one directory and MP3
files to a different directory. You might also want to have different removable
drive databases for these two file types, in case you have separate CD-Rs for
JPEGs and MP3 files.
-
Customizable interface
. You can customize keyboard shortcuts, the font and colors that are used in
the article list window, and various other features of BNR.
The new BNR2 version brings some additional features, as follows:
-
"Meta-groups"
. As with servers, you can now combine several newsgroups to create a
"meta-group", which you can then open and view like it was any single newsgroup.
-
Automatic header refresh
. You can let BNR2 refresh headers periodically even when you are not around,
for any newsgroups whether they are open or not.
-
Regular expressions
. BNR2 supports filters based on Perl-compatible regular expression.
-
yEncode support
. BNR2 supports
yEncode
, the new encoding method that greatly reduces the overhead of posting binary
articles on Usenet.
-
NewsRC support
. BNR2 supports importing and exporting the list of read articles using standard NewsRC files to help synchronize multiple newsreaders.
-
Server modes (blind servers and header servers)
. BNR2 allows assigning roles to individual servers such as Article-Only servers, which skip downloading headers and attempts to download articles based on the Message-ID's already downloaded from one or more other server.
-
NewzBin NZB support
. BNR2 supports importing and exporting
newzBin Message List (NZB)
files for downloading articles without downloading any headers.
-
IPv6 support
. BNR2 supports accessing IPv6 news servers on OS's that are IPv6-enabled.
What BNR does NOT support?
-
BNR does not support
reply threads
. BNR is a BINARY news reader and is not meant to be used for following
discussions.
-
BNR does not (at least for now) support
article posting
. You need to use a different program if you wish to post articles or binary
files.
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|
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|
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|
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|
Help & Support
|
FAQ
Version History
|
Mirror Sites
|
Credits