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Tom's Gravity Pages

Gravity MicroPlanet Gravity (c)
 the 32-bit Usenet News Reader for Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000.

Gravity is freeware. No nag screens.

DOWNLOAD

My other download links are no longer available. The only download link is the directory at freeshell.

Download Directory - Gravity 2.6

Use the directory listed above to download Gravity. Most people today want to install Super Gravity Version 2.6. The Super Gravity download files are labeled inst20xx.zip, or super20xx.zip, where 20xx indicates the build number. If you are cautious about using the latest builds, Build 2039 was very stable and in use for quite a while, with very few problems. Builds 2056 and 2057 have been out for a while and seem very nice too.

Please note that there is a database change in Build 2056. If you use Build 2056 or later you will NOT be able to use a previous Gravity version without losing your database.

Builds 2056 and up use MIME (RFC 2047) encoding for ISO-8859-xx. This is not welcome in many news groups. One of the first things you should do after installing is set Gravity to send 8 bit characters This makes Gravity act like before. The settings are located in

View - Global Options - Encoding
8-bit settings

What file do I need?

Which Super Gravity file you need depends on whether you have Gravity Version 2.3 or higher on your system. If you currently have Gravity 2.3, 2.5, or 2.6 installed on your system, you can download super20xx.zip. More installation information is on the Super Gravity page.

If you do NOT have Gravity installed on your system, download inst20xx.zip. This file contains a complete install program. After Gravity is installed on your system you can easily update to later builds by downloading super20xx.zip and replacing the executable.

The last official MicroPlanet Release was Version 2.5. If you want that version, download grav25.exe. If the Version 2.5 install hangs at the splash screen you can usually install it by installing Version 2.3 first (file grav23.exe) and installing 2.5 over it. However, most people today want one of the newer Super Gravity 2.6 Versions.

Open Source Version 2.7

If you are interested in the open source version of Gravity 2.7 that uses PCREs and shows x-faces you can download it from SourceForge. Please read the notes so that you are aware of any limitations (like no spell checker).

If you are interested in French, Portuguese, and Italian Gravity versions, see other languages, below.

HELP AND LINKS

  • Gravity has a built in help, accessed from the menu. There is even a tutorial. Note: None of the Super Gravity Version 2.6 changes are in the help. (see the Super Gravity Page for more)

  • FAQs - My collection of Frequently Asked Questions

  • The MicroPlanet FAQs contain a lot of good stuff including known bugs and work-arounds, changing registry storage associations and troubleshooting tips.

  • MICROPLANET'S QUICK START GUIDE - Basics for new users.

  • Release Notes - Version 2.5 release notes. If you have Gravity, they are also in your application folder. (Super Gravity Version 2.6 changes are not included, but can be viewed here)

  • USENET NEWS GROUPS

    • alt.usenet.offline-reader
    • news.software.readers

      Important: Remember to put "Gravity" in your subject !!

      It is not necessary to cross post to both groups. You may find more Gravity discussion in alt.usenet.offline-reader. If you are new to Usenet you should read up on netiquette. Try some of the Usenet Links.

  • GOOGLE (acquired DEJA NEWS) - You can search Google (Deja) archives for Gravity articles. Use one of these links.

    http://groups.google.com/
    http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search

Other Languages

  • Gravity Brasil

    Gravity Brasil is a web site with a Brazilian Portuguese FAQ and free technical support (in Portuguese). Also available is a Brazilian Portuguese version of Gravity with all menus and dialogs translated for Portuguese BR and a new interface. URL is http://gravity.abacatedoce.net or use the direct link below.

    http://gravity.abacatedoce.net

    You can also find a new version of Gravity ZX (go to English Version). Gravity ZX is just Gravity 2.70b.2067 with better icons.

    English Version Page

  • French Gravity Version Gravity.fr - Version Française réalisée sans les sources, avec Ressources Hacker et un editeur de texte Hexa (version 2.6). Icônes et menus modifiés. Lecture des Xfaces. Publiée ave l'autorisation des proprietaires des droits. (see next link for a French Help file).

  • New - April 2004 - French Help File - A French translation of Gravity's help file based on the French Version listed above. Use the Internet Link of the left frame > Gravity.
    "Nouveau - Avril 2004 - Fichier d'Aide en Français - La traduction en Français du fichier d'aide de Gravity qui s'accorde à la Version Française mentionnées ci-dessus. Utilisez le lien Internet de la fenêtre de gauche > Gravity".

  • FRENCH PAGE

  • DUTCH PAGE. The tutorial covers the installation and setup of Gravity, the usage and abilities.

  • ITALIAN VERSION, GravITy, includes Gravity 2.5 in Italiano by Antonio Favata. Soon, this link will no longer work. Click Here for my GravITy Page
  • MICROPLANET - MicroPlanet officially closed their web site and offices in December 2001. Do not send e-mail to support@microplanet.com because you will not receive a reply.

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Examples

I have three pages of Gravity examples:

Regular Expressions

If you need help with regular expressions I have examples and a tutorial (mainly for beginners).

USENET LINKS

Third Party Software

Third party software can be used to expand Gravity's capabilities or even allow reading e-mail with Gravity. You can probably find more than these on the Internet if you search. Some Europeans use Morver (http://www.morver.de) and Korrnews to add character set support and display umlauts and accented characters.
  • X-Faces in Gravity - If you are interested in viewing x-faces attached to newsgroup posts, Matthijs Laan wrote a patch for Gravity. See his web page for more information. Please note that the patch does not work with builds after Version 2.6 build 2039. You should check his page to see if it has been updated.

    http://www.xs4all.nl/~walterln/winface/

  • SSL with stunnel - This helper application allows you to read news on secure servers like Netscape's "secnews.netscape.com". Stunnel is available from www.stunnel.org. I wrote a small page about setting up stunnel, but it may be getting a little old. Thanks for the pointers Don! Go to the SSL Page.

  • Hamster - Is a local news server that can also post e-mail to a newsgroup (threaded) which you can read with Gravity just like a newsgroup. I wrote a short page describing it and showing a basic configuration. I updated this page once, but it may not be up to date.

  • Nfilter - According to the author ..

    Nfilter is a supplemental filtering program to your existing news reader. It is designed to run transparently alongside any client for Windows ... Even if your news reader has filtering capabilities (e.g.. Agent), the filter can perform more advanced filtering on fields that are not normally available to your news reader. Nfilter is capable of filtering on any fields that appear in the header of a news article, not just fields in the overview (normally news clients can only filter on author, subject, etc).

    I have done a little testing and it is true, you can filter on all headers returned by your server including Xref and Path (the "Lines" header did not work in earlier versions but was fixed in the newer versions). Nfilter supports scoring and regular expressions. You can either have Nfilter drop the articles and you will not see them, or add a Text Flag to the post subject.

- Contact Tom (me) -

Please send corrections, suggestions, or contributions to me at ...

nfn03862@naples.net

Thanks ! Thanks ! Thanks !

There are people who should be acknowledged. The following people have offered encouragement, input, contributions and support in one form or another. Their contributions have been invaluable.

  • Al Choy, A-1 programmer and cool guy, author of Super Gravity, (and big chunks of the release versions), formerly of MicroPlanet

  • Tony Edwards, formerly of MicroPlanet

  • Patrick Lamaizière, author of Mime-Proxy, for very helpful charset information and some beta testing

  • Dirk Nimmich for very helpful charset information

  • Barnabas at Speckz.com for providing a lot of download bandwidth

  • Don Mastrovito, for helping with stunnel config

  • Heiko Studt, for helping translate Hamster Ver 2 scripts

  • Francois Visagie, wherever you are!

  • The other Gravity users who graciously allowed me to use their material

    Many thanks to all !

    Tom

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Tom Bates