Unison Newsreader by Panic

Over the years I've used various Usenet clients/newsreaders on my Macs. These include Hogwasher, MacSOUP and MT-NewsWatcher. These three have been around for a long time. A comparatively recent newsreader is Unison. I think it is rather surprising that Panic created Unison but I'm glad they did.

It's very easy to list the things that Unison does not have or do. MT-NewsWatcher, for example, has much superior filtering. Hogwasher has so many more capabilities than Unison that it would make for quite a list. However Unison does have one thing over all the other current dedicated Usenet clients/newsreaders for the Mac I feel, and that is superb usability. For me this is far more important than, say, the extensive filtering capabilities of MT-NewsWatcher.

It is multi-pane and I've reached a point now where I think I would not consider using a Usenet client/newsreader which was not multi-pane. The window for browsing a newsgroup is split in two, the top is a list of entries, the bottom is the text of the selected post.

When the messages in the list are grouped into their respective threads you see only the headers for the original posting but a little disclosure triangle on the left will show the whole thread when clicked on. Option-click on the triangle and all threads will open.

At top right of the message browsing window is a dynamic search field, at least I think that is what it is called. Anyway it is like the search field at top right of Apple's Mail application. This search field can be set to look for strings in the From header or in the Subject header.

The only other Mac Usenet client/newsreader I've used which has a dynamic search field is Hogwasher. I feel it is an extremely useful thing and having used it so much in Hogwasher it is difficult for me to be without it. What I'd really like with that search field is a history so that I could go back on recently entered searches.

Posts can be viewed in the bottom half of newsgroup browser or in their own window. 99% of the time I read them in the bottom half of the browser. Text is format=flowed and I am very glad about this. I far prefer it to the display of ">" at the beginning of lines.

To me it is very much clearer, easier to make out just who said what when the quoting is going quite deep.

Unison doesn't insert line-breaks to create what is oddly called "wrap" by some. Instead lines are left to wrap against the window, I really like this. I also like it when other clients do the same. The clients considered to be pukka by some all seem to put these line breaks in, however judging from the posts I've seen on Usenet it looks like Thunderbird does not.

Rule creation, or filtering appears quite basic with Unison. However it is more than good enough for me. All I do is set it to highlight my own posts and to ignore those of people I don't like.

You can use GREP in the rule creation, but I don't have any need for this. You can specify that you want to ignore threads that have been cross-posted to more than a given number of newsgroups. This is very useful and I have it set to a maximum of four. I feel the biggest rule creation limitation in Unison is that you can only apply rules to the headers in the the pop-up menu. You can't simply specify any header you might want to apply rules to. I don't have any desire to do this myself but I think Panic should make this possible in Unison, after all it can be done with Apple's Mail.

If you've created rules in Apple's Mail you will have a sense of déjà vu when you go to do the same in Unison. As with Mail I find applying colour based on a given criterion to be very useful because like Mail the colours displayed in the message browser are quite vivid.

In Unison the groups window is in a columnar view. Just like the one that is available in the OS X Finder. This is really a marvellous way to search out newsgroups.

I think Unison brings a great ease of use to Usenet participation.

There is one massive caveat which is that personally I believe that Usenet is now a very diminished medium. The web-forum in its many varieties has eclipsed Usenet now. With RSS we can be kept up-to-date with them. They can easily be found using today's very efficient search engines. Personally I think a richer range of discussions can be accessed by simply using a web-browser.

Multi-pane

Dynamic search field

Format-Flowed text

We don't like Mr. Know It All…

We create a rule: if "From" contains his email address

…we "kill" him (he he)

Groups window is in a columnar view