> Is there one (or a *very small number) of sources for a thorough
> explanation of how and what uqwk/qwk and related utilities are and do?
http://www.nic.com/~cannon/handson.html
> *must I have uqwk on my ISP's system? Is there a version I could run
> *only on my PC?
Think about where news and mail come from. You have to connect to
the Net, somehow. (The Net being shorthand for "any combination of
systems that includes access to Usenet and the Internet, which are
not the same thing.")
Now, uqwk on a shell account is just one possibility for the grabbing
of news and/or mail; you can run Souper or one of the other programs
discussed here. They use your SLIP or PPP connection to some news server
somewhere, and suck up the raw data you need, and use it to build a packet
on your own machine. Once you have a valid SOUP packet, Yarn doesn't
care where it came from. Hope that helps.
-- Kevin <cannon@nic.com>