Ray Davison of Simon Fraser University has modified an old version (1.4.2) of Eudora to be even more scriptable than the normal version of Eudora using the C- language. I haven't tried to use this version at all, because I had no trouble with Eudora's relatively simple setup, but if you have a particularly weird configuration that you must script around and you don't mind using a slightly older version of Eudora, it might be worth checking out at either of these two URLs:

ftp://ftp.sfu.ca/pub/mac/eudora/

The $25 shareware program Homer from Toby Smith comes in two forms -- one for MacTCP-based connections and one for those who have only a Unix shell account. Homer is primarily used via a MacTCP-based connection, but suffice it to say that if you plan on using IRC and you have a Mac, Homer is the way to go. The serial version of Homer has a number of limitations not shared by the MacTCP version. First off, it's not compatible with the Communications Toolbox, which means you cannot use any Macintosh that uses a GeoPort Telecom Adapter instead of a modem (the GeoPort Telecom Adapter only works with the Communications Toolbox). Second, you must use a Unix account -- no other operating systems will work -- that can telnet out to a remote host. Third, some versions of Telnet simply don't cooperate with Homer and echo back everything you say and generally won't work properly.

MicroPhone Pro 2.0's Internet Mail and Internet News modules both use MicroPhone Pro's scripting language and both work over either a MacTCP connection or, more interestingly, a dialup connection to a shell account. They have similar, easy-to-use interfaces. Internet Mail is an offline mail reader -- you read and write email offline and then connect to send replies and receive new messages. Unfortunately, Internet News is not an offline newsreader.

At about $150, MicroPhone Pro is relatively expensive, and I wouldn't buy it just for Internet Mail and Internet News. Although these modules seem to work pretty well, there are a number of rough edges. More seriously, Internet Mail and Internet News, because of their heritage as MicroPhone Pro scripts, are slow as molasses, not in transfers so much as in basic execution. However, on the positive side, they're easier to set up than Eudora and most of the newsreaders, and if you do want MicroPhone Pro anyway, they're a welcome addition. You can contact Software Ventures at [email protected] or 510-644-3232.

http://www.svcdudes.com/

Matt Hall's $15 shareware MacNews provides a graphical interface for reading Usenet news even if you have only a shell account. The only requirements are that your machine run an NNTP (Net News Transport Protocol) server or that your machine be able to contact one over the Internet. MacNews is decidedly a work-in-progress, and it lacks enough features that you may not want to lose all those you enjoy in a Unix newsreader in terms of reading and killing threads. On the other hand, the ability to use cut and paste and look at a Macintosh interface may outweigh the disadvantages.

Stefan Kurth's MacSOUP is a bit of an odd program in that it requires the use of a program called uqwk on your Unix account to provide offline news and mail reading from a shell account. I have no idea how common or easily installed uqwk might be. That said, uqwk was already installed on my Unix shell account, and the commands provided in MacSOUP's excellent documentation worked perfectly for creating a soup packet file containing all my mail and the messages in the newsgroups I read, and then downloading that file for use on the Mac. In my brief testing, MacSOUP worked well, and its interface, although a touch clumsy in spots, was easy to use and generally well done. If you have uqwk on your Unix account (try typing the command to see if you get a response) or can easily install it, I'd recommend that you take a look at MacSOUP.

Ray Davison of Simon Fraser University has modified an old version (2.0d17) of John Norstad's excellent NewsWatcher program to work over a serial line, much like Eudora. I haven't tried configuring this newsreader, in large part because it sounds like it's a bit harder than would be ideal, but it works on very much the same lines as Eudora SFU and requires the same sort of chat script edited in ResEdit.

ftp://ftp.sfu.ca/pub/mac/newswatcher/

I want to like Bill Cramer's $25 shareware program TheNews because of its flexibility. Like Eudora, it can work with shell accounts, UUCP accounts, and MacTCP-based connections. However, I have trouble with TheNews every time I try to use it, so I won't look at it in detail. I'll settle for warning you that TheNews is slow to start up, at least over a MacTCP-based connection, because it seemingly downloads the full list of newsgroups every time you launch the program. It's also memory-hungry -- it comes configured to use 1,300K in the Finder's Get Info window, but it crashed when I tried to sort the full group list until I doubled that number.

ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/