README

    This is Pan, a powerful and user-friendly Usenet newsreader for GTK+.
    The latest information and versions of Pan can always be found at
    <http://pan.rebelbase.com/>.


THE SALES PITCH

    Pan is good for Reading News.

        * Pan is the only Unix newsreader to score 100% on the
          Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval newsreader evaluations.
        * Pan has keyboard bindings for mouse-free newsreading.
        * Basic newsreader features, such as reading and writing news,
          threading articles, and replying via email, are supported.
        * Articles can be sorted by author, date, subject, or the number
          of unread children in the thread.
        * Multiple connections are supported, so articles can be read
          while binaries are downloading.
        * Articles can be filtered by regular expression matching,
          read/unread state, binary/text, etc.
        * Works well as an offline reader.
        * Articles can be queued until you want to go online, and can be
          re-edited at any point before they're posted.
        * A flexible rules system allows you to delete, hide, download,
          or notify you of, etc. articles that match a subject, or are
          posted by a particular user, and so on.
        * The same system can be used to define automatic actions on behalf
          of the user: auto-download, auto-cache, auto-delete etc.
        * Groups can be filtered by regular expression matching
          subscribed/new/all, etc.

    Pan is good at Binaries.

        * Attached images can be shown inline.
        * Pan can download and thread articles as quickly as bandwidth allows.
        * uuencode, MIME, and yEnc attachments are all supported.
        * A task manager lets you reorder, cancel, and resubmit download tasks.
        * Multiple connections are supported, so many binaries can
          be downloaded simultaneously.
        * Multipart articles are automatically grouped together.
        * Non-binary, incomplete multipart, and saved messages can be filtered
          out of the article list.
        * Files can be attached to a Usenet article and are
          automatically encrypted with yEnc, threaded and referenced by Pan.
        * Articles can be encrypted or signed with a public or private PGP key
          for enhanced privacy and security.
        * Connections can be encrypted with the TLS protocol.

    The rest of the sales pitch is at <http://pan.rebelbase.com/features/>.


RELEASE NOTES

        * You are advised to back up your $PAN_HOME directory (by default,
          '$HOME/.pan2') before upgrading Pan.

        * If you have previously been using a localhost server with stunnel and
          you now want to connect directly to a news server using the actual
          server address, do not create a new configuration entry for the
          server. Pan treats a new entry as a new server and does not preserve
          existing data on your subscribed groups, even though you are
          connecting to the very same server as before. Always edit the existing
          server configuration to preserve your subscriptions.

        * Directories to search for SSL certificates can be defined with
          environment variables 'SSL_CERT_DIR' or 'SSL_DIR'.

        * To use password storage provided by GNOME Keyring or libsecret, build
          Pan with support for that feature, and then enable it in Edit ->
          Preferences -> Miscellaneous -> 'Save passwords in password storage'.


REQUIREMENTS

    Pan requires these libraries:

        * GLib 2.17.6 or higher <http://developer.gnome.org/glib/>
          (optionally GLib 2.26.0 or higher to support multiple Pan instances)

        * GTK+ 2.16.0 or higher (optionally GTK+ 3.0.0 or higher)
          <http://www.gtk.org/>

        * GMime 2.6.20 or higher <http://spruce.sourceforge.net/gmime/>
          (optionally with PGP cryptography support)

    The following libraries add extra features but are optional:

        * GtkSpell 2.0.7 or higher for spellchecker support
          <http://gtkspell.sourceforge.net>
          (GtkSpell 2.0.16 or higher when using GTK+ 3)

        * Enchant 1.6.0 or higher for spellchecker support
          <http://www.abisource.com/projects/enchant/>

        * libnotify 0.4.1 or higher for notifications
          <http://www.galago-project.org/news/index.php>

        * GNOME Keyring 3.2.0 or higher for password storage
          <https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring>

        * libsecret 0.16 or higher and gcr 3.20 or higher for password storage
          when using GTK+ 3 <https://developer.gnome.org/libsecret/>
          <https://developer.gnome.org/gcr/>

        * D-Bus to support running multiple Pan instances
          <http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/dbus>

        * GnuTLS 3.0.0 or higher for encrypted connections (TLS 1.x)
          <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/>

        * Yelp Tools for built-in user manual
          <https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Yelp/Tools>

    The following libraries are experimental and not suitable for any use other
    than testing. Use at your own risk:

        * GMime 3.0.0 or higher <http://spruce.sourceforge.net/gmime/>
          (optionally with PGP cryptography support)

        * WebKitGTK+ 1.8.1 or higher for embedded HTML
          <https://webkitgtk.org/>

    Run the following command to get a list of all options that you can enable
    or disable at configure time:

    ./configure --help


INSTALLATION

    Run the following command to build Pan configured with the default options:

    ./configure && make

    This will result in the executable ./pan/gui/pan.

    When building Pan from the Git repository, run the following command
    instead:

    ./autogen.sh && make

    Finally, run the following command as root to install Pan:

    make install


UPGRADING

    Upgrading typically requires that you do the exact same procedure as when
    installing Pan.


HOW TO REPORT BUGS

    For details on how to report bugs, see <http://pan.rebelbase.com/bugs/>.


CONTACT

    To get in touch with Pan contributors and community members, subscribe to
    one of the Pan mailing lists. For more information, see
    <http://pan.rebelbase.com/mailing_lists/>.

    You can also chat with other community members on irc.freenode.net, channel
    #pan.


LINKS

    Pan     : http://pan.rebelbase.com/
    GTK+    : http://www.gtk.org/
    GNOME   : http://www.gnome.org/
    GNU     : http://www.gnu.org/