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


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>:
  Support for news servers not maintaining an internal message counter

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

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

Jari Lehtonen <jari@utu.fi>:
  Max OS X 10.3 fixes

joules@gorfajn.com:
  Limit number of messages to download

Simon Kelley <simon@thekelleys.org.uk>:
  Debian fixes

Dr. Craig Hollabaugh <craig@hollabaugh.com>,
Gantert, John P. <jgantert@northropgrumman.com>,
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>,
Claas Langbehn <claas@rootdir.de>:
  Bug reports and suggestions

