WHAT IS BRAG?
=============

Brag collects and assembles multipart binary attachements from
newsgroups. This is a robust command-line tool, well suited to run 
as a cron job.


FEATURES
========

* Collects and downloads multipart binary attachements

* Supported encodings: uuencode, MIME base64 and yenc

* Filters messages using accept/reject patterns

* Optionally saves message subjects

* Supports NNTP authentication

* Supports non-default NNTP ports

* Can combine parts from different newsgroups or even different servers

* Bulletproof: Restarts from the last successful operation,
  handles network errors and disk-full situations gracefully

* Very fast: can utilize multiple parallel connections to server


WHERE TO GET IT
===============

Brag is available from 

  http://brag.sourceforge.net/ or
  http://www.akos.uklinux.net/brag

The project is maintained at SourceForge:

  http://sourceforge.net/project/?group_id=3998


TIPS AND TRICKS
===============

Speed it up!
------------

If you have a fast network, you might want to tune the number of connections
to the news server, using the -t option. The default value is 2. If you have
a DSL line or better, we recommend to set it to 4 or more.


Running brag as a cron job
--------------------------

Here is a sample crontab for brag. It runs brag once a day, plus
cleans up unfinished parts older than one week:

  30 1 * * * brag -q -s news.myisp.com -g my.favorit.group
  30 2 * * * find ~/.brag -name '[0-9]*' -type d -mtime +7 | xargs rm -rf


Reconnecting after network errors
---------------------------------

Brag terminates with exit code 2 in case of network problems. Here is a
sample script which attempts to reconnect twice after a network error:

  #/bin/sh
  for i in 1 2 3; do
    brag -s news.myisp.com -g my.favorit.group
    [ $? != 2 ] && break
    sleep 60
  done


Decoding yenc-encoded messages
------------------------------

Yenc is a popular new encoder, featuring compact encoded files and CRC error
checking. To be able to use it, brag expects an executable called "ydec"
on the PATH or for you to specify an alternate decoder for yenc-encoded
messages in the ~/.brag/decoders file as described in the brag manpage. 

For more details and Unix/Linux binaries, please visit http://www.yenc.org/.


SUGGESTIONS AND BUG REPORTS
===========================

Send them to the author Akos Polster: akos@pipacs.com


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
================

Neil D. McKay <mckay@eecs.umich.edu>:
  Wrote the original NNTP extension used in Brag

James T. Perkins <jamester@commonhouse.net>,
Robert Harrah <suprnerd@intelos.net>:
  Added support for news servers not maintaining an internal message counter

Julio Snchez Fernndez <jsanchez@users.sourceforge.net>:
  Performance improvements and support for yenc encoded messages

King Rhoton <king@atomz.com>:
  Huge performance improvements utilizing multiple server connections

Trevor Phillips <phillips@central.murdoch.edu.au>,
Rick <rick@somers.net>,
Mike Manchester <mchester@pobox.com>,
Jason Hobbs <jason-hobbs@home.com>,
Michael Glauche <mg@plum.de>,
Kevin Stanchfield <kevin@shannon.jpl.nasa.gov>,
Holger Pfaff <Holger.Pfaff@class.de>,
Antti-Veikko Rosti <avir2@cam.ac.uk>,
Jim <kaka_6969@yahoo.com>,
Anders Hedberg <Anders.Hedberg@kau.se>:
  Bug reports and suggestions

