I  developed an (almost) simple trick to build a gateway between changi ant Peter Moylan's mailing list server, Majormajor ( http://www.pmoylan.org )

It only works with newsgroups which are created locally (so it can't work as a general gateway for usenet groups), but I 
think it could be an useful collaborative tool for limited working groups.

The trick consists in defining the group as "moderated", giving to changi the address of a majormajor Mailing List (which must have the same name of the newsgroup) as the moderator's address.

When a message arrives to the newgroup, it will be sent to the ML (the "moderator") for approval. There, a REXX 
script that I have written, implemented as a Majormajor "filter" (a program which runs automatically every time a message arrives to a specific list), will automatically post it both to the newsserver and to the ML.
The same script also provides to feed to the newsserver the other messages arriving directly to the mailing list.
In this way, the users have the choice to follow the group either connecting to the newsserver, receiving the messages 
through the ML, or both.

The REXX script  mail2news.cmd is available for anonymous download at ftp://respir.med.unisi.it
It works with Changi 10. I haven't tested it with the subsequent beta releases. It is absolutely non-professional (little or no error checking), but it is heavily commented and easy to modify.

Use it at your own risk.

It can reside in any directory (the more logical place is probably the MajorMajor working directory) and the same copy can be called by more than one list (each list must have the same name as the corresponding newsgroup, since the program obtains the name from the incoming messages).

A changi server carrying the newsgroup must be on the same machine as the Weasel daemon for the corresponding ML.

An SMTP server (Weasel or Sendmail) must also be installed

In practice, the script copies the message arriving to the list, modifies the headers  as required by the news or the SMTP servers (at least, it attempts to do it :-) and send it to both the news server (using inews.exe) and to the ML subscribers (using your Weasel or Sendmail SMTP server).

Please note that inews practically gives no error messages if anything goes wrong. The only way to get error messages is to launch previously syslogd and then check tho output on the file MPTN\etc\message.log, but this isn't my fault.

Here is how it works:

If you define a Changi newsgroup as "moderated", then messages arriving to the group are not accepted directly by Changi, but they are sent to an e-mail address (you must have an SMTP server running)  to the moderator. It is up the moderator to send back the message to Changi using inews.exe.

The more recent versions of Peter Moylan's MajorMajor Mail List Server, give you the possibility od installing in each list a filer program which will be activated by each message arriving to the list, and can modify it.

The trick is to create a newsgroup in changi as "moderated", giving the address of a mailing list (ML) as the "moderator". Now the messages sent to changi will actually arrive to the ML instead. 
The ML will have a filter (a REXX script is ok) which provides to feed all the arriving messages (regardless whether  they were submitted to the newsgroup or directly to the ML) to both the news server and the the ML addresses.

In this way, every one can read the messages on the newsserver and also have the option to receive them directly by e.mail (by simply subscribing and unsubscribing to the ML).

Step by step instructions:

1) First of all, create a newsgroup in Changi and define it as "moderated"  (I suggest to use the java interface for this, as it automatically update a few system files)

2) If using Weasel as the SMTP (by default Changi is set to use Sendmail), you must download qmail.cmd from Moylan's site and put it in the Mailroot directory of Weasel and MajorMajor (both programs must look to the same directory) and add to the CONFIG.SYS the line:
SET CHANGISMAILCALL=X:\Weasel\MailRoot\qmail.cmd
(where "X" is the drive where weasel resides and  "Weasel\Mailroot" the Path to the Mailroot)

3) To set the address of the moderator (Which in this case actually will not moderate anything, but will automatically forward all the messages), you must edit (or create) a text file "MAILPATHS" in the Changi work directory, containing in a separate line the name of the news group followed by the moderator address. As an example, if you crate a newsgroup "gossip" on the newsserver of your school, the line will read:

gossip gossip@myschool.edu

(Note: changi does not require that the e-mail address and the newsgroup have the same name, but this is requirement of the current version of my filter script)

4) You must only copy (copy, not rename!) the file rnews.exe as inews.exe (it is a strange program, which slightly change its behavior depending from the first letter of its name).

5) Now you go to MajorMajor and create a list with the same name as the "moderator" as defined in Step 3. At the voice "Filter" you put the path and name of my script program (or you write a better one by yourself), and you are done. The same script can be used by more than one list (that is why it requires the ML and newsgroup to have the same name).

Piersante Sestini
sestini@unisi.it