MeoWWW 0.9 BETA RELEASE
      Copyright 1999 G. Andruk <gerglery@usa.net>, <meowing@banet.net>

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
   under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
   Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
   option) any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
   WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General
   Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
   with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
   59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA

                                 ==========

   This is a beta release, so you should expect strange things to happen.

   MeoWWW makes newsgroups accessible from an HTTP server via CGI,
   avoiding some of the problems seen with standard NNTP clients (like
   getting to a news server through a firewall, configuring client
   readers, etc.) Currently it is intended for use with discussion groups
   only; MIME support may be added in a future version.
   
   Don't try this at home.  While MeoWWW might run on a client machine,
   it will be sluggish.  It wants to live on the same LAN as the news
   server.
   
   Features include relatively painless configuration; wide browser
   compatibility; rudimentary threading; load-balanced FAQ links;
   luser-resistant posting; moderated group indication; full X-Meow:
   support; and a really stupid name.  It is being made available under
   the GNU General Public License.
   
Stuff that still needs work:

     * MeoWWW currently uses vanilla stateless CGI, so it opens lots of
       tiny NNTP sessions; the plan is to remove that connection
       happiness later when it gets general statefulness.  [If you're
       planning to use this with an INN system and haven't yet set up
       nnrpd to run independently of innd, now would be a good time.]
     * Access control is currently rather primitive, just plain old WWW
       server auth.  Either a user can access all the groups, or none of
       them.  You could set up separate copies of the program for
       different types of access; it's small.  Posting, by the way, will
       only work if you've set up auth [hmm, maybe that's a good thing].
       
What you need to run it:

     * MeoWWW wants [3]Python 1.5.2.  Python is free and runs on bunches
       of operating systems.
     * It is written with U*X and [4]Apache in mind.  Other HTTP servers
       should work just fine but that hasn't been tried extensively.
       [MeoWWW may work under Windows, but there may be a need to
       sprinkle binary-mode dust on some of the file opens.  Let me know
       if you try this.]
     * Your NNTP server needs to support modern extensions, particularly
       XOVER, LIST ACTIVE pattern and LIST NEWSGROUPS pattern.  It's also
       assumed that basic NNTP features like ARTICLE/HEAD/STAT/NEXT/LAST
       are implemented for both group/article and message-ID contexts.
       
Where to get it:

   <URL:http://members.xoom.com/meowing/reader/>

Meow!