I currently use pan to read usenet. It works fine.

Presumably it, and almost every decent newsreader, has components that
* obtain a message from usenet
* display it in various ways, including handling text, embedded images, and so forth.
* other things too

What I want now, however, is to see the contents of usenet messages that have already been downloaded -- years ago. In other words, I'd like to use the facilities that are already baked into every decent usenet reader to process a message that's already on my hard drive. (for example, one I've downloaded way back in 2004). But I don't want the everything else that makes that part of a huge, full-function usenet eader.

But all the readers I've investigated seem willing to handle only messages they download themselves or have stored within their own on-disk data structures. There seems to be no mechanism for taking a usenet message obtained from elsewhere.

I'm just trying to see messages I've already got, so I can decide whether they are worth keeping.

-- hendrik