Pineapple News requires BeOS (Intel) version 5.0 or later. It doesn't work with BeOS 4.5 or earlier because I'd have to compile and test it on those earlier versions which I've never gotten around to doing. It has been tested extensively on versions 5.0.0, 5.0.1, and 5.0.3, and also works with BONE.
You must also have a working connection to the Internet via modem, DSL, cable modem, direct T1, or whatever, and account information for an NNTP news server.
There really isn't much to installing Pineapple News. If you've installed any other BeOS program from a ZIP file you won't see anything here you don't already know. Right now you must undertake the minimal installation yourself but eventually I'm going to write a PKG package installer for it and you won't even have to do that.
You've probably already unzipped the archive file which should have gotten you a new folder called PineappleNews. Move the folder wherever you want it to ultimately go. I suggest /boot/apps/PineappleNews but it will work fine anywhere.
Create a link to the PineappleNews executable file somewhere on your Be Menu, and that's the end of the formal installation.
Avoiding problems in the future If you want to avoid trouble later on there are two more things you should do. The first is to check that your timezone setting is correct. When you first install BeOS it defaults to Menlo Park, California and since the odds are good that you don't live there it's probably incorrect. Most users will not be able to post articles if the timezone setting is wrong. The second thing is to have a look at the Network preferences app and make sure that you have something filled in for Domain name and Host name. If you don't you may not be able to post articles. You can read more about these issues in the help topic If You Have a Problem.
When you execute the program for the first time it will notice that it's missing some stuff it needs to run and will go about creating it. It will put up a dialog box directing you to the help pages and begin insinuating itself into your system.
It will create two new file types in the FileTypes database: Pineapple Message (text/x-pineapple) and Initialization File (text/x-initialization). It also creates an index, PINEAPPLE:msgid, for Pineapple Message Files which it uses internally to keep track of cross-posted messages. In other words, do NOT remove this index or you'll see weird behavior. It may also have to create one or more file types for launched URLs but they should mostly already exist on your system.
Perhaps most importantly, the program will create a new folder called:
/boot/home/PineappleData
and several sub-folders, which is where it will store its article data.The program also creates a fresh copy of its initialization file. The full path will be:
/boot/home/config/settings/PineappleNews.ini
It's a simple text file which should open in StyledEdit when you double-click on it. You might want to make a note of its location because right now there are a lot of things saved in the file that you can only change by directly editing it. Eventually there will be dialog boxes so you won't have to, but there aren't yet. You might want to make a link to that file right next to the one you made for the program. More about editing the file can be found in the help topic PineappleNews.ini Reference.
You can remove every trace that Pineapple News ever existed on your computer by following the instructions in the the help topic Uninstalling Pineapple News.
You can rename the PineappleNews executable if you want but that act has repercussions. Let's say you rename it to PineappleNewsX. Now it will ignore its old PineappleNews.ini file and instead look for PineappleNewsX.ini, which won't exist. The program will think it has just been freshly installed and will go through its whole initialization process again, which won't cause any problems, it will simply create PineappleNewsX.ini and notice that the file types and indexes already exist and it won't try to create them again.
You might be wondering why the program behaves that way. As we programmers like to say: It's not a bug, it's a feature. I did that so that I could have more than one version of the program co-resident on my computer without them bumping heads.
Say you've just downloaded the latest version of Pineapple News but you've already got an older version installed. For all versions so far this has been a painless task. Simply throw away the folder where the PineappleNews executable file and its help files reside and replace it with the PineappleNews folder from the newly downloaded ZIP file. The program will retain all your existing settings and message files.
In the future I may have to break backward compatibility slightly, but I doubt it, and if I do the program will have some way of alerting you to the potential pitfalls.