Converting an existing non-WebReader newsrc file to WebReader format

If you already have a newsrc file which was generated by some other newsreader, and if its entries are of the form 
<newsgroup-name>: aaa-bbb,ccc,...,mmm
for subscribed groups, where aaa, bbb, ccc,..., mmm represent article numbers and 
<newsgroup-name>!
for unsubscribed groups, it will probably be much faster to use the newsrc2webreader utility to convert the file to WebReader format, rather than donwload all the newsgroups from scratch via the View groups->New groups function. To use newsrc2webreader, invoke it from the command line as follows: 

sparc5% java newsrc2webreader <newsrc-file> <newsrc-file-moddate> <NNTP-server>
where <newsrc-file> is the path to your original newsrc file, <newsrc-file-moddate> is the time and date <newsrc-file> was last modified and <NNTP-server> is the name of the NNTP server WebReader will connect to. This last parameter is optional; if specified, the resulting file names will end in .<NNTP-server>. Note that the <newsrc-file-moddate> parameter must be specified in the form yyyymmddhhmm, e.g., 
sparc5% java newsrc2webreader /bigslice/uomini/.newsrc 199612031503 nntphost.tlg.net
newsrc2webreader will delete your old WebReader newsrc files and rebuild them using the contents of <newsrc-file>. The procedure can take a few minutes or longer, depending on the size of your original newsrc file and the speed of your processor.

Note that since file conversion is an offline function, the group descriptions generated are just the string

(description not available)

If you prefer to have the actual group descriptions, you will need to perform a full download of all the newsgroups known to your NNTP server via View groups->New groups.

After newsrc2webreader has completed, the files Newsrc.subscribed.<NNTP-server> and desc.subscribed.<NNTP-server> will be created in the current directory, as well as a subdirectory named Groups.<NNTP-server>. This directory contains a number of files which hold group name and description information, and is updated whenever new groups are downloaded from the NNTP server and when groups are subscribed and unsubscribed to.

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