>1. I've not been able to find a Windows client which will reply
>appropriately to emails received from a mailing list. Specifically
>they all automatically reply to the Reply-to: field when one exists,
I assume you have some way, in wndows, of separating the digest into
separate messages. Almost every news reader has some kind of nickname
or alias file (e.g., Eudora). Simply add (or replace) the To: address
with the digest address, which you store, once, in the nicknames list.
This is very quick and easy. You can do it with the mouse, or often
directly from the nickname list.
>2. I've not found any Windows client which integrates mail and news
>as well as yarn does.
Wonder if you ever tried News Express -- an older freeware reader.
It certainly does not integrate news/mail entirely. It can send mail
but not receive it. But it is a lot nicer than a lot of the modern
readers, in my subjective opinion.
>Being able to filter mail from a mailing list
>into a pseudonewsgroup seems to be unique to yarn and probably the
>feature I miss most.
This feature is useless, unless you can separate the digest into
separate messages. Without this, your digests simply go into a
newsgroup instead of a mail folder.
No mailer I know of, dos, windows -- whatever, will separate a digest
into separate messages by itself. Yarn, like all the others, requires
a separate program to do this.
For one thing, I
>cannot use a Windows editor or the Windows clipboard. And, I cannot
>use standard Windows editting functions.
You certainly can use the windows clipboard. There is a freeware
product called dosbar that adds a windows button bar to the dos box
window, along with mouse cut and paste to/from the windows clipboard.
This was written for win 3.1. Windows 95 has property settings that
will do the same kind of thing.
For some reason, windows NT does not seem to support programs like
dosbar. But a freeware product called xpcmouse (xpcmou13.zip or some
such as Simtel) works in yarn and cuts and pasts to the clipboard.
The problem with cut/paste in yarn is moving freely between folders,
inbox, and the newsbase so you can grab text you want to paste. Readmail
solves this by displaying folders, newsgroups etc. within different
windows inside DOS(!) -- and you can move freely between the windows.
Why you want to use a windows editor (like notepad?) escapes me, since
the ones that come with windows are so inferior to other freeware
editors. However, there are good editors that work in both windows
and dos, for instance vim and its relatives. The only thing a windows
editor offers that is unique is resizable windows.
You can get moveable and resizable windows, multiple windows, etc.
in dos with freeware like ne, or other editors that use the Borland
TP editor object. You can use a genuine window editor for yarn, if you
use one of those programs (e.g., schedule and run) that automatically
starts up windows to run a single program. You can also set this up
manually. In fact, the same tricks can be used to launch a windows
browser, temporarily, when finding a URL of interest in yarn. But
again, there are GUI browsers like arachne for DOS, that are free.
>Also, having to deal with the intermediate step of soup packets is a
>drawback and inconvenience. Connecting to pop/smtp under Windows
You've got me here. If you use any offline news/mail reader, you
must use a separate program to transport files, by definition.
But you dont have to use SOUP packets. Yarn, and readmail will read
textfiles in the formats output by POP/SMPT.