Here is a little utility that I hope others will find as useful as I
have.  Ever since I started to read the net, I have wanted a means to
determine how much news is waiting for me before I dive into it.  When
the "wn" program came across net.sources a couple months ago, I thought
my problem was solved.  Unfortunately, that program didn't do what I
wanted; I am not interested in knowing all of the unread news on the
system but only the news groups that I read. Consequently I decided to
write "newscnt."

Newscnt makes use of your .newsrc file and the system's
/usr/lib/news/active file to determine your unread news in much the
same way that readnews or vnews does.  It looks at your "option" line
in .newsrc to determine the news groups that interest you and then
build the structures it needs to count your unread articles.  By
default, newscnt only returns a total, but with the "-a" option it will
give you a breakdown by newsgroup.  A manual page is included that
describes all the bells and whistles.

Newscnt uses the "scanargs" argument parser that was distributed quite
some time ago on this net.  I have included a copy in this distribution
for those who don't have one.

Any bug reports, suggestions for improvement, other complaints or even
praise should be sent to:
	Glen A. Taylor
	ihnp4!inuxd!gat
	AT&T (Consumer Products Division)
	P.O. Box 1008
	Indianapolis, IN 46206    (317) 845-3709
