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Introduction to Usenet News and the trn Newsreader
This document was modified for the Alcor computer system at Concordia University by Kevin J. Neden of the Computer Users' Group, in conjunction with IITS. Changes are primarily concerned with the pico text editor, the menu system, and adding relevant local information. Many thanks to Anne Bennett, Daniel-Robert Gooch, Nicholas Varacalli, and Cindy Winikoff for their suggestions and assistance in modifying this document for the Concordia community. (Wed Aug 30 22:44:50 EDT 1995)
Htmlized and slightly modified by Dana Echtner, 1996/08/20.
Jon Bell January 20, 1995
Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995 by Jonathan Bell. For
free or non-profit use only. You may modify this
document for local use and/or redistribute it,
provided that you keep the original credits intact.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the following people for their corrections, suggestions, and
other help:
The purpose of this document is to give you a quick introduction to Usenet
news, and get you started on reading and posting news articles. The first
part is a brief overview of Usenet news and the news-reading software. The
second part is a tutorial on the basic steps involved in reading and
posting news articles. You should read it in sequence, and work through the
examples yourself. The third part is a collection of intermediate-level
topics, in no particular order.
If you find something confusing, or would like me to add something in a
future edition of this note, please let me know. Thanks!
This document assumes that you are using version 3.6 of trn. Some of the
details may be slightly different for other versions. You can find out which
version you are using by typing v (lower case!) at the newsgroup-selection
prompt (read now?). Also, some details depend on how your news system has
been configured. You should contact your news administrator if you have
questions about these. See the section Your News Administrator for more
information.
Finally, this document assumes that you are using the Bourne shell, so that
your UNIX command prompt is $, or that you are using the menu system
(menushell) available on Concordia's Alcor system. If you are using some
other shell, your command prompt may be different (usually %, as in the C
shell). Everything described here should work under any shell, except as
specifically noted. Menu users can execute commands from any menu by
preceding them with an exclamation mark (!), or by running a shell
(available from the main menu).
Loosely speaking, Usenet is a collection of computers which allow users to
exchange public messages on many different topics. (The term "Usenet" is
also used more precisely to refer to a specific subset of these messages, as
described below.) These messages are similar to electronic mail, but are
transmitted by special software which is separate from the electronic mail
system. They are intended for public discussions rather than personal
communication. If you have ever used a computer bulletin board service
(BBS) or the public discussion areas of commercial online services (e.g.
CompuServe's "forums"), you will find that Usenet strongly resembles both of
these.
A Usenet message is called an article. Articles are grouped by topic into
newsgroups. The entire collection of articles and newsgroups is called
news.
Each Usenet computer maintains a database of articles, which it keeps up to
date by exchanging articles periodically with its "neighbors" on Usenet.
Periodically, your news system receives batches of articles from its Usenet
neighbors; this may happen anywhere from once a day to once every few
minutes. Similarly, your news system periodically sends locally-created
articles to its neighbors. It may also pass its incoming batches on to some
of its neighbors. Finally, your news system periodically (usually once each
night) expires (removes) old articles to make room for new ones. How long
articles are kept can vary from one newsgroup to another, and depends on
the amount of disk space available and the perceived "value" of the
newsgroup.
Usenet and the Internet are not the same thing. Usenet was originally
developed on UNIX computers which set up temporary dial-up telephone
connections among themselves via modems. They exchanged news articles
using the UUCP (UNIX to UNIX copy) protocol which is built into the UNIX
operating system. Many computers still exchange news in this fashion, but
in recent years more and more computers have been using the permanent high-
speed connections of the Internet, exchanging articles using NNTP (Network
News Transfer Protocol). Therefore, not all Usenet computers are part of
the Internet, and not all Internet computers participate in Usenet.
There are more than 1500 commonly distributed newsgroups, on a wide variety
of topics including computers, scientific fields, politics, national
cultures, and hobbies. Newsgroup names generally contain two or more parts,
separated by periods. As you read from left to right, the various parts of
the name progressively narrow the topic of discussion. The first part of the
name indicates the top-level hierarchy to which the newsgroup belongs. The
standard "Big Seven" top-level hierarchies are:
Strictly speaking, Usenet consists only of these "Big Seven" hierarchies.
Proposals for new newsgroups in these hierarchies are discussed and voted
upon according to a set of rules known as "The Guidelines." If you're
interested in learning about this process, read the articles How to Create
a New Usenet Newsgroup and Usenet Newsgroup Creation Companion, which are
posted regularly to news.announce.newusers, news.groups, and news.answers,
among other places. Then read both news.announce.newgroups and news.groups
for a few weeks to get a feeling for Usenet politics.
There is a somewhat widely distributed alt hierarchy which contains
newsgroups that are too "big" (e.g. contain large files of encoded computer
graphics), too controversial (sex, drugs, etc.), or too "off-the-wall" for
the standard Usenet hierarchies, along with many newsgroups on "mainstream"
topics. Creating a new newsgroup is much easier in the alt hierarchy than
in the standard hierarchies, so a new newsgroup is sometimes created there
with the intention of building enough traffic to justify creating a
newsgroup in one of the standard hierarchies, or if there is not enough
interest in creating one there. For more information, read the article So
You Want to Create an Alt Newsgroup, which is posted regularly to
alt.config, alt.answers and news.answers. Then read alt.config for a while.
Finally, there are various special-purpose hierarchies which are not
distributed as widely as the "Big Seven" and alt. Some of these focus on
specialized fields, for example, bionet for biology, hepnet for high-energy
particle physics, and vmsnet for users of computers from Digital Equipment,
Inc. which run the VMS operating system. Others are intended mainly for
distribution within limited geographical areas or within single
institutions, for example ba for the San Francisco Bay area or de for
Germany. Concordia University has its own hierarchy, appropriately called
concordia. Some newsgroups include:
The total amount of traffic in the "Big Seven" hierarchies (Usenet proper)
is now over 100 megabytes per day, and has been almost doubling each year.
Many sites receive only a limited selection of newsgroups because of
limitations in disk space and the capacity of their network links, or
because of specific policies on what kind of newsgroups can be received.
Which newsgroups you might want to read obviously depends on your
interests. You should browse through the newsgroup lists and sample various
groups. I strongly recommend that you at least scan the following
newsgroups:
Complete lists of "Big Seven" newsgroups and extensive lists of alt
newsgroups, with very brief descriptions, are posted every month or two in
the newsgroups news.lists and news.announce.newusers.
Most Usenet sites have a news administrator who maintains the news
software, monitors disk space, creates new newsgroups, etc. On small
systems, this person may simply be the overall system administrator. On
larger systems, the system administrator may designate someone else as news
administrator. The job may be only part of the person's overall
responsibilities, and it may even be strictly a spare-time job.
If you have any questions which might depend on how the news software is
set up on your particular system, you should contact your news
administrator. For example, if you want to read a newsgroup which is not
currently available on your system, your news administrator is the only
person who can either arrange to receive that newsgroup, or explain why
that is not possible. At Concordia, the news administrator may be contacted
by sending e-mail to newsmaster@concordia.ca.
While the newsmaster is the person to contact for requesting the addition
of newsgroups on the Concordia server, if you have more basic questions
about reading news and using trn on Alcor you can post them on the
concordia.dept.iits.help or news.software.readers newsgroups. You
should search through the existing articles on the newsgroups when looking
for answers to questions: your question may have already been answered, or
you may be able to find the answer in one of the posted FAQs.
To read news and post new articles, one uses a program called a newsreader.
The newsreader program which is described in this document is called trn
("threaded read news"). It is an extension of the venerable rn ("read
news"), originally written by Larry Wall of NASA. The threading extensions
were added by Wayne Davison of Borland, Inc.
In addition to the fundamental organization of articles by subject area
into newsgroups, trn links followup articles (replies) to their parent
articles to form threads of discussion on particular topics. Actually, an
article may attract several direct replies, each of which in turn receives
replies; and so the resulting collection of articles is better described as
a "tree" rather then a "thread." Nevertheless, "thread" is the standard
term.
When you enter a newsgroup, trn presents a menu of the discussion threads
which are currently active. It allows you to select only those threads
which you want to read, and ignore the others. It also presents articles
within a thread (or tree) in an orderly sequence, so that you can follow
the discussion easily. Finally, trn keeps track of which articles you have
read in each newsgroup, so that once you have read an article, or have told
trn to mark it as read, it disappears from the selection menus.
Trn normally operates on three levels:
There is also an "article selection level," a holdover from the original
rn, which allows you to select individual articles directly, without regard
to discussion threads. You will not normally use it.
You give trn instructions by typing commands at various prompts. Different
levels of the program use different prompts. For example, the newsgroup
selection prompt looks like this:
All trn prompts provide a list of suggested commands in square brackets.
Most commands consist of a single letter or symbol, and take effect
immediately without waiting for you to press return or enter. A few
commands, which require you to type in a sequence of letters (e.g. the name
of a newsgroup), do not take effect until you press return or enter.
Usually, the commands that you can type depend on which level of the
program you are currently using. However, three commands have more or less
the same effect everywhere.
Pressing the spacebar always performs the first command in the list of
suggested commands. This is usually the most "natural" command at that
point, in the sense that if you do nothing but press the spacebar at each
prompt, trn eventually displays every unread article in every newsgroup to
which you are subscribed.
Typing q always quits from what you are currently doing and takes you
"upward" one level in the program. For example, if you type q while you are
at thread-selection level, you go back to newsgroup-selection level. If you
are at newsgroup-selection level, typing q takes you out of trn and back to
the menu system or to UNIX's $ prompt.
Typing h always gives you a complete list of commands which you can give at
the current prompt. This list can be overwhelming for novices, but after
you have become somewhat familiar with trn, the h command is a useful
reminder of what's possible.
Menu users should select Internet Communications from the main menu and
then Read or Post Netnews. If you are using a UNIX shell, at the $ prompt,
type trn. If you have never read news before, you should see something like
this:
To add new group use "a pattern" or "g newsgroup.name". To get rid of
newsgroups you aren't interested in, use the 'u' command.
You are now at newsgroup selection level, in which trn presents you with
the names of newsgroups, one at a time, and asks you if you want to read
them.
When you run trn for the first time, it has no idea of which newsgroups you
are interested in, so it presents you either with only a few newsgroups
which your news administrator has deemed of interest to new users, or with
all the newsgroups which your system receives. In Usenet jargon, we say
that trn has subscribed you to these newsgroups.
If you find yourself subscribed to only a few newsgroups, you should
probably read those first, for practice. At some point, you can look in
news.announce.newusers or news.lists for lists of newsgroups so you can find
other newsgroups that you might be interested in, then subscribe to them
using the procedure described in the next section.
If you find yourself subscribed to all the newsgroups on your system, you
are faced with the task of unsubscribing from the ones you don't want to
read. The simplest and most tedious way of doing this is to unsubscribe
from each one individually. Typing u at the newsgroup selection prompt
unsubscribes you from the named newsgroup; trn then presents you with the
next newsgroup. When you come to a newsgroup whose name looks interesting;
you can press the spacebar or type + to start reading the newsgroup as
described in the section Reading a Newsgroup, or type n to skip over it for
now. If you get tired of this process, you can type q to quit from trn, and
then come back to it later.
Fortunately, there's a quicker way to get rid of all those unwanted
newsgroups. Type q to quit from trn immediately, then give the following
commands at the UNIX $ prompt (if you are using the menu system, don't
forget to start each command with an ! and don't include the $!):
(Watch out! The first line uses backslashes, not ordinary slashes!) This
edits your list of newsgroups (which is stored in a file named .newsrc, as
described in the next section) so that all colons become exclamation points
(which unsubscribes you from all newsgroups), then removes the old version
and replaces it with the new one. Then re-enter trn; it will tell you that
there is "no unread news in subscribed-to newsgroups," because you are no
longer subscribed to any newsgroups. At this point you can subscribe to the
newsgroups you do want to read.
In order to subscribe to a newsgroup, you must "go to" it first, using the g
command at newsgroup selection level. Suppose, for example, that you want
to subscribe to rec.travel.europe:
(Note: type g rec.travel.europe as if it were all on one line, although it
may wrap around to the next line on your screen.)
Trn keeps track of which newsgroups you have subscribed to, and which
articles you have read in those newsgroups, in a file named .newsrc in your
disk directory. Whenever you subscribe to a newsgroup that you have not
subscribed to before, trn asks you where you would like it to place the
newsgroup in your .newsrc; this determines the sequence in which trn
presents newsgroups to you. Pressing the space bar gives you the default,
$, which tells trn to place the newsgroup at the end of your .newsrc. You
can see what the other possibilities mean by typing h.
At this point you can press the space bar or type a + to start reading the
newsgroup you have just subscribed to (see the next section), or you can
enter another g command to go to and subscribe to another newsgroup, etc.
When you get tired of reading a newsgroup, you can unsubscribe from it by
giving the u command at the newsgroup selection prompt:
The newsgroup you have unsubscribed from remains in your .newsrc, but is
marked so that trn knows to skip over it. If you decide to subscribe to it
again, you get the following:
Since rec.travel.europe is already in your .newsrc, trn doesn't have to ask
you where to put it.
To find out which newsgroups you might want to subscribe to, see the two
sections on Searching for Newsgroups, later in this document.
You may enter a newsgroup when you see a prompt like this one:
Pressing the space bar or typing a + produces a menu of all the current
discussion threads:
From left to right, the menu displays a selector letter for each discussion
thread, the names of the authors of the articles in the thread, the number
of articles for each subject title, and the subject(s) under discussion. A
single thread may contain several subjects, because the author of a
followup article may give a different subject for his/her reply if the
topic has drifted. An angle bracket (>) before a subject indicates that all
the articles are followups to an earlier article; if there is no angle
bracket, the thread begins from scratch with the first article.
There are actually three different forms of the thread selection menu. You
can rotate among them by typing L. The long mode, shown above, is the
default on most systems, but your news administrator may have configured trn
so that it uses another mode as the default. Medium mode puts multiple
authors on the same line where possible, in order to show more threads on
the screen:
Short mode omits the authors completely, and shows one subject per line:
To select threads for reading, simply type the selector letters a, b, d,
etc., without pressing return or enter in between them. (Some letters are
not used because they are commands; for example, q means "quit.") You may
select several threads in succession; trn does not actually display the
articles until you press return or enter. Threads that you select are
indicated in the menu by a + next to their selector letters. You can un-
select a thread by typing its selector letter again.
If the bottom line of the menu gives a % figure (in the example above, Top
35%), the thread selection menu extends over more than one screen. You can
advance to the next screen by pressing the spacebar or typing >, and
continue selecting threads; or you can start reading what you've already
selected by pressing return or enter.
When you reach the last screen, pressing the space bar or typing Z displays
the first article in the first thread you selected. You may also start
reading before you reach the end of the menu, by pressing return or enter.
For this example, I selected only thread b on the first screen of the thread
menu, and pressed return:
Pressing the space bar gives you the rest of the article, or another
screenful, whichever is appropriate:
(Notice the (Mail) at the beginning of the end-of-article prompt. This
signals that you have mail waiting for you. Some (but not all) trn prompts
have this feature.)
For a description of the various parts of this article, see the section
Anatomy of a News Article.
At this point, pressing the spacebar or typing n displays the next article
in the thread. Pressing the spacebar at each prompt eventually displays all
the articles in the thread, then advances to the next thread if you
selected more than one. Finally, you return to the thread selection menu,
from which the threads you just read have disapppeared; trn has marked all
the articles you read so that you don't have to see them again.
To go back to the beginning of the article you're reading, hold down the
control or ctrl key and type r (often called "control-R," ctrl-R, or ^R).
To go back one screenful, type b.
If you find yourself in the middle of a long article that you don't really
want to read, type n to skip ahead to the beginning of the next article. If
you don't want to read the rest of a thread, type J to skip ahead to the
beginning of the next thread. In both cases, trn "junks" the articles
you've skipped, that is, it marks them as if you had read them, so they
won't show up in the thread selection menu again. If you want to go back to
the thread selection menu immediately (without junking any articles you
haven't read yet), type +. There are many more possible commands, both in
the middle of an article and at the end; type h at the appropriate prompt
to see them.
When you are back at the thread selection menu, you can select more threads
and read them, as described above. If you are finished with this newsgroup
for now, but think you might want to read some more of these threads later,
type q to leave the newsgroup, but leave the remaining threads marked as
unread so that you will see them next time you enter the the newsgroup. If
you do not plan to read any more of this batch of threads, type either X
(that's a capital X!) or c (that's a lower case c!), which marks all
remaining threads as read, so they do not appear in the thread selection
menu the next time you enter the newsgroup. The difference between X and c
is in their treatment of articles which are crossposted to more than one
newsgroup; X marks them as read in all the newsgroups in which they appear,
while c marks them as read only in the current newsgroup. I usually use X.
In either case, you reach the read now? prompt for the next newsgroup you
have subscribed to.
The first rule for new users about posting news articles is: Don't (yet)!
You should read news for a while to get a feel for what kinds of articles
are considered appropriate and which practices are frowned upon. Some of
the articles in news.announce.newusers contain guidelines to Usenet
etiquette, or "netiquette." Different newsgroups have different
"personalities," so even if you are an experienced user, it's a good idea
to read a newsgroup for a while before posting to it.
Suppose you finally decide that you want to participate in a discussion by
following up (replying to) an existing article. To do this, you need to be
at article-reading level, and at the end of the article you want to follow
up. For this example, I chose an article in the newsgroup misc.test, which
is specifically intended for experimental postings: (you could also use
concordia.test for such purposes)
Typing n here makes your article part of the current discussion thread;
typing y starts a new thread (see the next section for details).
Trn now takes you into a text editor. The default editor is pico, which is
the very easy to use editor from the pine mail program. If you are already
familiar with another text editor, you can change your default editor: see
the section Changing Your Default Editor for instructions on how to do
this.
This is a "skeleton" article which has some of the header lines filled in.
Note that the top line and the bottom two lines appear with reverse video
text on your screen.
Use the arrow keys to move the cursor down to the last line possible and
then begin entering text. Pico uses control characters for commands, so
remember to press the control key when trying to use the commands listed at
the bottom of your screen. Help on the displayed commands (and more!) can
been seen by pressing control-g (^G). You can easily correct mistakes on
the current line by using the delete key and typing over the mistake. You
may also use the arrow keys to move the cursor around the message and make
changes by typing.
You do not usually have to add anything to the header lines, even though
most of them are blank. The essential ones have already been filled out.
The Cc: line comes in handy for sending a copy of an article to someone
(such as the author of the article you're following up) via e-mail; simply
move the cursor to the end of the Cc: line and type in the address. Leave a
space after the colon.
To leave pico, type ^X (control-x). If asked whether you want to save
changes, respond with y (for Yes), and be sure not to change the file name!
Trn now asks you what you want to do with the article:
Trn places the article in your local article database. When someone reads
it, it looks like this:
After some period of time, the news software sends the article out to the
rest of Usenet.
The newsgroup misc.test is a good place to post test articles for two
reasons. First, people tend to be annoyed by test articles in other groups.
Second, various sites on Usenet monitor misc.test with software that
automatically sends an e-mail reply to the author of each article. This
allows you to verify that your article really is getting out, and what it
looks like. When I did this example, I got eight replies: six from the
U.S., one from South Africa and one from Sweden. (The group concordia.test
does not do this, but you can still check whether your post worked.)
Typing F (instead of f) to follow up an article starts a similar process,
but now the skeleton article "quotes" the original one, inserting a > at
the beginning of each line:
This is useful for establishing the context of any comments you make.
However, you should remove as much of the original article as possible,
leaving only the minimum amount necessary for context. To delete a single
line, position the cursor anywhere on the line and type ^K (control-k). To
delete several consecutive lines at once, position the cursor on the first
line you want to delete and type ^^ (control-^, or perhaps control-6), then
use your cursor keys to select text. Press ^K to delete the selected text.
It's customary to leave the attribution line (In article...) at the
beginning of the quoted material, but delete any signature at the end, if
it agrees with the attribution. For example:
There are two methods for posting an article which does not follow up an
existing one. Which one is easier to use depends on whether you are
currently reading articles in the desired newsgroup.
The first method applies if you are at the newsgroup selection prompt. Type
.f (notice the period!) at the prompt, then press return or enter:
The second method applies if you are currently reading the desired
newsgroup. When you are looking at the thread selection menu, type :p (the
preceding colon is important!):
You can also use the :p command while reading an article, or at the end of
an article:
Actually, there is also a third method: if you start to follow up an
article and then decide that you'd really rather start a new thread, trn
gives you a chance to change your mind:
At this point, you must specify not only the subject of the article, but
also a distribution code which indicates how far you want the article to be
propagated. If you leave this blank, your article will be sent to all of
Usenet (or at least to all sites which receive this newsgroup). An explicit
distribution code, in principle, restricts the propagation of your article.
Exactly which distributions are available to you depends on how your news
system has been set up (ask your news administrator). For example, at
Concordia, the following distributions are allowed:
local Concordia University In practice, you should not expect any distributions other than local to
work perfectly. They always "leak," either by accident or design. The local
distribution should never leak, however; if it does, please let your news
administrator know about it.
As before, the screen clears and trn gives you a skeleton article to edit
and post. See the previous section for details.
Sometimes your reply to an article is of interest only to its author, and
not to Usenet as a whole. Often, someone posts a question with the
stipulation that replies be to him/her personally, and he/she will post a
summary of the responses in a later article. In such cases you should send
your reply directly to the author via e-mail. You can do this within trn by
typing r instead of f, or R instead of F, depending on whether you want to
quote part of the article in your reply. Trn prepares the reply and allows
you to edit it, just as if you were posting a followup article, but e-mails
it to the author instead of posting it to Usenet.
When trn starts up, it checks for newsgroups which were created since the
last time you read news. If it finds any, it asks if you want to subscribe
to them:
If you type y, trn subscribes you to the newsgroup and asks you where to
place it in your list of newsgroups (a file named .newsrc, in your home
directory):
Pressing the space bar (or typing $) places the newsgroup at the end of the
list. For other possibilities, see the next section.
Trn asks you about each new newsgroup, in turn. If you answer n, trn leaves
you unsubscribed to that newsgroup. If you answer Y, trn subscribes you to
all the remaining new newsgroups. If you answer N, trn leaves you
unsubscribed to all of them. (The last two options are handy when you're in
a hurry and there are a lot of new newsgroups!) Finally, you reach the
newsgroup selection prompt for the first subscribed newsgroup in your list.
If you chose to subscribe to any of the new newsgroups, you will normally
see them after you have read all the other newsgroups you have subscribed
to previously. Of course, if you're in a hurry, you can use the g command
to go to the new newsgroups immediately.
Trn presents newsgroups to you according to the order in which they appear
in your newsgroup list. By default, trn places newly-subscribed newsgroups
at the end of the list. If you subscribe to several newsgroups, you may find
that you have to skip over many of them in order to get to your favorites
when you are in a hurry. You can avoid this nuisance by by rearranging your
newsgroup list to place your favorite newsgroups at the beginning.
To do this, go to the newsgroup selection prompt for the newsgroup you want
to move, then type m ("move"). Trn asks you where you want to place that
newsgroup:
Here you have several possible responses, which you can see explained by
typing h. Probably the most useful one is to type a number indicating the
new position in the list: 0, 1, 2, etc. You can verify the result by typing
L at the next newsgroup selection prompt. This displays your newsgroup
list:
The numbers after the newsgroup names indicate which articles you have
read, or told trn to junk.
With a bit of patience, you can (if you like) put your entire newsgroup
list in alphabetical order, using this method. There's an easier way to do
this, though. Outside of trn, at the $ prompt, give the following commands:
This creates a sorted copy of your newsgroup list, then deletes the
original and renames the sorted copy.
Consider the following article:
The first line tells you which newsgroup you are reading (sci.physics), that
this is the 12781st article that your news system has received in this
newsgroup, and how many articles are left to read. In this example, there
are 12 articles left in the threads you have selected, plus 153 articles in
threads you have not selected.
The From: line tells you who wrote the article. Usually, but not always, it
contains a valid e-mail address followed by the sender's real name or
nickname in parentheses.
The Newsgroups: line appears if the article was posted simultaneously
(crossposted) to more than one newsgroup.
Next comes the subject of the article. The [1] indicates that this is the
first distinct subject in this discussion thread. Re: indicates that this is
a followup to somebody else's article.
The Date: line indicates when the article was posted. It may take a few
days for an article to propagate across Usenet, depending on how the
poster's computer is connected to its neighbors.
The Organization: line usually tells you the "real" name of the location
corresponding to the author's e-mail address.
Usually, the article header is actually longer than this. Trn can "hide"
many of the header lines, at the discretion of the news administrator. To
re-display the article with all the header lines, type v at the --MORE-- or
what next? prompt.
To the right of the article header you see one of trn's special features: a
"map" of the current discussion thread. Each "box" represents a single
article; they are connected to show the logical sequence of followups
(replies). The numbers correspond to the "subject numbers" which you see in
the subject line. The article you are now reading is highlighted. Articles
which you have already seen are enclosed in parentheses; those which you
have not seen yet are enclosed in square brackets. Articles which are no
longer in your news database are indicated by empty boxes. If the
discussion is long, you see only part of the map here; you can see the
entire map by typing t.
Finally we come to the article text itself. Lines which begin with > are
"quoted" from the article that this one is following up. There is usually
an attribution line which indicates who wrote the quoted text. These are
inserted automatically when you follow up an article using the F command,
as described earlier. If the quoted material itself quotes another article,
you see lines beginning with >>. Occasionally you see four, five, or even
more levels of quoting, but many people consider this to be bad form.
At the end of an article, separated from it by two dashes, there is often a
signature, which may contain the author's name, e-mail address(es), mail
address, phone number, etc. Many newsreader programs, including trn, allow
you to create a "signature file" which is automatically appended to the end
of each article you write.
Trn provides two methods for doing this. The traditional method uses a file
named .signature, which you can create using any text-editing program (e.g.
vi or pico). For example, using pico:
The screen clears, and you see a blank file for you to edit:
Now use pico to type in your signature, pressing the return or enter key at
the end of each line. When you are finished, press ^X (control-x) to leave
pico.
After you have created your signature file, you may need to make it readable
by the news software. Your file system may be set up so that whenever you
create a file, only you have any access to it. To make it readable by other
users (including the news software), give the following command at the $
prompt: (note that this is not necessary on Alcor)
The .signature file is appended only after you have written your article, so
you do not see the signature while you are editing the article. Trn itself
does not actually append the .signature; this is done by a separate program
(usually called inews) which trn calls upon to post the article.
Trn also provides a newer method for specifying a signature, which appends
the signature before you begin to edit the article, so you can see it. In
this method, there are actually two signature files: .news_sig, which trn
appends when you use the f or F commands to post a reply to the rest of
Usenet; and .mail_sig, which trn appends when you use the r or R commands
to send the reply directly to the author of the original article via e-
mail. Trn itself appends these signature files. You can create these al-
ternative signature files using the method described above for .signature.
If you use either .news_sig or .mail_sig, do not also use .signature,
otherwise you will end up with two signatures on your articles!
In the interest of conserving network resources, your version of trn or
inews may not allow you to have a signature which is longer than four
lines. If this is true, and you try to use a longer signature, the extra
lines will be ignored.
If you are using the menu system, then you can change the editor trn uses
through the menu system. Under the Set Preferences menu, choose Choose Your
Favourite Text Editor and pick an editor from the list. If you use a
command-line UNIX shell when you login, you need to do a bit more work: In
order to specify an editor, you must set an environment variable named
EDITOR in your login initialization file. How you do this depends on which
shell you're using. (It is also a good idea to simultaneously set the
VISUAL environment variable to the same value as EDITOR.)
If you're using the Bourne shell (and have $ for your command-line prompt),
edit the file named .profile (note the period at the beginning), so that it
contains the following lines (using vi as an example):
If you're using the C shell or tcsh (and have % for your command-line
prompt), edit the file named .cshrc (again note the period), so that it
contains the following lines (again using pico as an example):
The next time you log in, the editor you specify will become the default
for all editing sessions in trn, and in any other program which uses the
EDITOR variable.
Sometimes you may want to re-read an article or thread which you have
already read, and therefore no longer shows up in the thread selection
menu. Typing U when you are looking at the thread selection menu causes the
menu to display all previously-read threads:
This is just like the usual thread selector (I used short mode for this
example), except that all the selection letters are followed by a - sign to
indicate that they have been read. Select threads to read as usual, by
typing the selector letters, which changes the corresponding - signs to +
signs. Pressing return or enter (or the space bar when you are at the last
screen of the menu) takes you into article-reading mode, as usual.
To switch back to the normal thread selector, type U again when you are
looking at the menu.
If you've previously read everything in the newsgroup, trn doesn't even
present you with the newsgroup at newsgroup selection level, so you must
use the g command to go to it, then type U:
This gives you the thread selection menu for all previously-read articles,
as described above.
If you change your mind about something you have written, you can "take it
back" by canceling your article. You can do this only if the article has
not yet expired on your system. First, find your article and begin reading
it; you may have to use the U command at thread selection level if you have
already read it once. Then, either in the middle of the article or at the
end, type C (that's a capital C!). This removes the article from your local
article database, and sends out a special type of article called a control
message which instructs all other Usenet computers to remove their copies
of your article from their article databases.
You can also supersede an article you have written by replacing it with a
"`corrected" version. To do this, find your article as if you were going to
cancel it, but then type z or Z to start editing a replacement article. The
z command (lower case) gives you an empty article to edit, as if you were
posting a new article; the Z command (upper case) gives you a copy of your
original article to edit. In either case, when you finish editing, leave the
editor and post the article as usual. Trn sends out the new article along
with instructions to cancel the old one and insert the new article in its
place.
You can re-read articles as described previously only while they are still
in your system's article database. If you want to keep an article for
permanent reference, you must save it to your disk directory. To do this,
type s filename at the end of the article (or while you are reading it),
substituting the desired file name for filename:
By default, trn places the file in a subdirectory called News, in your home
directory. If you don't specify a file name, trn makes the file name the same
as the newsgroup name, but with the first letter capitalized:
If you answer y to this question, the file will be in "mailbox format",
which allows you to read it using an e-mail program, just like a file of
saved e-mail messages. If you answer n, the file will be a plain text
(ASCII) file. If you answer q, you don't save the article at all. On some
systems, mailbox format may include special formatting information, so if
you plan to download the file to your PC for printing or storage, you should
use plain text format. If you're going to keep the file on your UNIX
machine, mailbox format may be more convenient.
If you save an article to a file which already exists, trn appends the
article to the end of the file. This gives you one method of saving several
articles in a single file:
When you are at thread-selection level, you can save an entire discussion
thread, or group of threads, to a single file. Simply select the thread(s)
as if you were going to read it (them), by typing the appropriate selector
letter(s). Then, instead of pressing return or enter to start reading the
articles, type :s filename (note the preceding colon):
This thread contains six articles, all of which are saved into one file in
mailbox format. Pressing the spacebar takes you back to the thread
selection menu. The threads you saved are still selected, so you can read
them now if you like, by pressing return or enter. Otherwise, you can mark
them as read by typing J, in which case they disappear from the menu.
To examine the files you just saved, you must leave trn. Remember that you
will not find these files in your home directory, but rather in the
subdirectory News. With the menu system, go to the File Management menu and
use Change to Another Directory option. When asked, give News as the
directory name. You can then use the other menu options like Edit a File
on your saved files. If you wish to return to your home directory, choose
Change to Another Directory again and give .. as the directory.
If you use a standard UNIX shell, then use the following series of commands
(note that the cd command won't work if executed as !cd from the menu
system) to get to your saved files:
You can read the saved articles by using the more or page command, just as
for any other text file, or you can open them with a text editor such as vi
or pico. When you are done working with your saved articles in your News
subdirectory, you can get back to your home directory as follows:
If you saved the articles in mailbox format, you should be able to read
them using your e-mail program just as if they were saved e-mail messages.
For example, using mailx:
If you're using pine as your e-mail program, you'll have to move the file
into the directory where pine looks for your mail folders. This is usually
the subdirectory Mail of your home directory, although your system
administrator may have configured pine differently. (On alcor it's "mail"
If you're in your News subdirectory, you can move the file like this:
If you're in your home directory, do it like this (just use an ! to make
the command work under the menu system):
Now start up pine as usual, and the file articles should appear in your list
of mail folders.
If you expect to do this frequently, you can tell trn to save articles by
default into the Mail subdirectory instead of into the News subdirectory.
If you're using the Bourne shell ($ prompt), one way to do this is to edit
your .profile file and add the following lines:
If you're using the C shell (% prompt), edit your .cshrc file and add the
following line:
In either case, the changes take effect the next time you log in. If you're
using some other e-mail program besides pine, find out where it looks for
saved mail and adjust the instructions above accordingly.
Sometimes you may want to post the same article to more than one newsgroup,
because the article may be of interest to more than one audience. For
example, an article about Swedish-German relations would be appropriate for
both soc.culture.nordic and soc.culture.german. If you simply post copies
of the article in the usual way to each newsgroup, it not only takes more
of your time, it also consumes more network resources, because each copy
must be transmitted and stored separately on each Usenet computer. The
crossposting mechanism allows you to post one copy of the article
simultaneously to more than one newsgroup; only that one copy is
transmitted, and with some operating systems, including UNIX, only one copy
needs to be stored on each computer. With some newsreaders, including trn,
reading a crossposted article in one group marks it as read in the other
groups; if you read more than one of the groups in question, you see the
article only once. Also, at trn's thread selection level, the X command
marks all remaining articles as read not only in the current newsgroup, but
also in all newsgroups to which they have been crossposted.
Before you crosspost, you should think carefully about whether you really
need to do it. If you do crosspost, do it to as few groups as necessary. It
is considered a breach of "netiquette" to crosspost to many newsgroups, and
doing so may produce angry responses via e-mail. If your crosspost is
innapropriate or posted to too many newsgroups you could lose your account.
To crosspost an article, start by posting as usual to one of the newsgroups
in which you want the article to appear. For this example, I'll post in
misc.test and crosspost to alt.test, which was created to serve the same
purpose as misc.test, but for the alt hierarchy:
This takes you into the pico editor, as usual:
To crosspost, use the cursor keys to move to the end of the Newsgroups:
line, then type a comma and the names of the newsgroups to which you want
to crosspost. Separate the newsgroup names by a comma only (no spaces):
Then move the cursor to the last line, type in the article and post it as
usual.
When you follow up a cross-posted article, your article is normally also
cross-posted to the same newsgroups that the original article appeared in.
You can change this by editing the Newsgroups: line in the header to add or
remove newsgroups. To add a newsgroup, proceed as above. To delete a
newsgroup, just position the cursor and use the delete key to remove the
newsgroup name. Don't forget to delete the extra comma, too.
As described in the previous section, followup articles normally appear in
the same newsgroups as the original article. The author of the followup
article can change this by editing the Newsgroups: line in the header. The
author of the original article can also change this, by editing the
Followup-To: line, which is normally blank. If the Followup-To: line is not
blank, all followup articles appear in the specified newsgroup.
This is commonly done in two situations. First, the author of the article
may want to attract the attention of readers of several newsgroups, but
then restrict any followup discussion to one newsgroup. For example,
discussions about creating new newsgroups are supposed to take place only
in news.groups. Therefore, someone who wants to create a new newsgroup
normally cross-posts a "Request for Discussion" (RFD) to
news.announce.newgroups and to any newsgroups which might have readers who
might be interested, but directs all followups to news.groups.
Second, the author may want all responses to go directly to him/her via e-
mail, so that he/she can prepare a summary of them to post later. Placing
the word poster in the Followup-To: line accomplishes this.
If you redirect followups, you should mention this in the body of your
article, because many people don't read headers carefully, and may
otherwise be puzzled when their followup articles don't appear in the
newsgroup that they're reading!
Some newsgroups are moderated, that is, articles posted to them must be
approved by a moderator. Trn allows you to post an article to a moderated
group in exactly the same way as to an unmoderated group, but when you tell
trn to send the article, it e-mails the article to the moderator and
informs you of what it has done. If the moderator approves the article, it
will appear in the newsgroup after a (hopefully) short delay. Otherwise,
he/she will probably return the article to you with an explanation of why
it was not suitable for that newsgroup.
There is so much news that finding just what you want to read can be a real
adventure. Fortunately, trn provides search commands at each level that can
help you in this process. You can search for newsgroups, for articles
within newsgroups, and for text within articles. Once you've found what
you're looking for, you can either select it for reading, or you can junk
it immediately without reading it.
At the newsgroup selection prompt (read now?) you can list all unsubscribed
newsgroups whose names contain a specified string, using the l command
(that's a lower-case "ell"):
This method has two drawbacks. First, it searches only the names of the
newsgroups. Second, it searches only newsgroups that your news system
receives, so it doesn't answer the question, "does a newsgroup exist
somewhere on this topic?"
If you're lucky, you can find more extensive lists of newsgroups in the
newsgroups news.lists, news.groups, news.announce.newusers, and/or
news.answers. Look for a two-part series of articles titled List of Active
Newsgroups, and another two-part series titled Alternative Newsgroup
Hierarchies. These articles contain not only newsgroup names, but also
brief descriptions (a phrase for each newsgroup). You can search them using
the g command while reading them, as described in the section Searching
Text, below.
However, these lists are posted fairly infrequently (every two months or
so), so the most recent set may have expired on your system. In that case,
you'll have to leave trn and try one of the methods described in the next
section.
If the newsgroup listings described above have expired from your news
system, you can get copies of the most recent versions via e-mail from the
Usenet FAQ archive at rtfm.mit.edu. Simply send e-mail to mail-
server@rtfm.mit.edu, with a blank subject line and one or more of the
following commands in the message body:
You should get a reply within a day or two.
If you have access to gopher, you can search a more extensive list of
newsgroups, including many local and regional hierarchies. Connect directly
to gopher.presby.edu, or look in your Other Gophers menu (or whatever it's
called) for Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA. From our top-level menu,
choose Internet Resources, then Lists of Usenet Newsgroups. This list is
from UUNET in Falls Church, Virginia.
If you don't have access to gopher, but can use anonymous ftp, you can get
a copy of the UUNET newsgroup list from their ftp archive at ftp.uu.net.
Look in directory networking/news/config for the file newsgroups.
You could also check out Anne's "Monster Newsgroups List" in
/public/pub/news/monster-newsgroups-list for a list of newsgroups we carry.
When you are in the thread selector for a newsgroup, you can tell trn to
select articles which contain a specified string of characters in the
Subject: header line, using the following command:
The two /s delimit the string you are searching for; the + tells trn that
you want to select individual articles which match. Upper case versus lower
case doesn't matter in the search string. For example:
Trn first gives you a progress report as it selects the articles:
At this point, pressing the space bar takes you back to the thread
selector, with the appropriate threads marked as selected:
Some threads are marked with + to indicate that the entire thread was
selected; others are marked with * to indicate that only some articles in
those threads were selected. You may now press return or enter to start
reading the selected articles; or you may make further selections, either
by hand or with the / command.
Instead of selecting just the articles whose subjects match, you may want
to select the entire threads which contain them. In this case, use ++
instead of +:
In the example above, this command would select all the articles in thread
i, not just the ones with the subject Bug report 11d.
In commands like these, the part between the slashes can be a UNIX regular
expression, which allows you to do sophisticated pattern-matching.
Describing regular expressions in detail is beyond the scope of this
document. However, you should be aware that the following characters have a
special meaning in a regular expression: ., *, [, / and \. If any of these
appear in the character string you are searching for, you must "escape"
them by preceding each one with a backslash (\). For example, to search for
and select all articles which have M*A*S*H in the Subject: line, you should
use a command like this:
By default, the / command searches only the Subject: header line. In order
to search for articles by particular people, you need to tell trn that you
want it to search the From: header line:
To search for all articles from Steve Wall, you might use the following
command:
The f modifier tells trn to search the From: line rather than the Subject:
line. If the person's name is sufficiently distinctive, you can probably get
away with searching for only part of the name.
If the name is very common (e.g. John Smith) or is missing completely, you
can search for the address instead. In principle, you could use something
like
but it turns out that because of the way trn implements f-searches, it may
search only the part of the From: line that is in parentheses. Therefore,
you should use the following command instead, if you want to search for the
address:
Notice that you should "escape" the periods in the address with
backslashes. This should search the entire From: line instead of just the
part in parentheses. However, this method may be a bit slower than the first
one.
Just as with subject-line searches, you can select the entire thread which
contains a matching article by using ++ instead of +.
You can also use the / command in the thread selector to search for and
select articles which contain specified text anywhere in the article. To do
this, use the a ("anywhere") modifier. For example,
selects all articles which mention bananas somewhere in the article text.
While you are reading a long article, you may want to advance directly to
the line which contains a certain word, instead of paging through the
article one screenful at a time. To do this, use the g ("go to") command at
the article-reading level:
Don't put a space between the g and the text you're searching for, unless
you specifically want to match a preceding space.
You can use the techniques described above to junk articles (remove them
from the thread menu) instead of selecting them. Simply replace + with j.
For example,
junks all articles which contain garbage in the Subject: line. Similarly,
to junk all articles from Steve Wall (instead of selecting them, as
described above), you might use
If you don't want to read anything from Steve Wall, you might not want to
read any followups to his articles, either. In this case, use , (comma)
instead of j:
Trn's threading mechanism helps you to skip discussions that you are not
interested in, by grouping together articles on the same topic into one
entry in the thread selection menu. In many newsgroups, you can efficiently
scan the thread selection menu for the discussions you want to read, select
them, read them, and then junk everything else with the X or c commands.
However, some newsgroups carry so much traffic that even scanning the thread
selector is time-consuming. Trn provides tools to help ease the process of
selecting the articles you want to read, while ignoring the ones you don't
want. You can tell trn to select articles for you automatically, based on
criteria you specify. Then, when you enter the newsgroup, you can simply
press return or enter to start reading these pre-selected articles. Also,
trn can junk (mark as read) articles automatically according to similar
criteria, so that they do not appear at all in the thread selector. This is
especially useful for dealing with people who repeatedly post offensive,
boring or nonsensical articles; you can make them "disappear," as far as
you are concerned.
Trn does this by "memorizing" selection and/or junking commands in a
special file which is popularly known as a killfile. Trn creates a separate
killfile for each newsgroup in which you use this feature; they are usually
located in your News subdirectory. Whenever you enter a newsgroup, trn
checks to see if you have a killfile for that newsgroup. If you do, trn
performs the commands stored in the killfile before displaying the thread
selector.
Killfiles can be quite elaborate, with many different kinds of commands.
Here I describe only a few of the more useful possibilities.
Suppose you want trn to select articles in a certain thread automatically
in future sessions. In the thread selector, use the up and down arrow keys
to move the cursor to the selector letter for that thread, then press T.
Trn asks you:
Type a +. (To see what the other possibilities are, type h.) Trn responds:
Selection memorized. The thread is now selected, so you can read it;
furthermore, trn memorizes the message-ID's of the unread articles in that
thread, placing them in the killfile for this newsgroup. In the future,
whenever you enter this newsgroup, trn will automatically select all
articles which follow-up to articles whose ID's it has memorized, and in
turn memorize the message-ID's of the newly-selected articles.
You can also use the T command while reading one of the articles in that
thread. In this case, trn memorizes the message-ID's for all the articles
in that thread which have not yet expired, including the ones you have read
already.
Finally, you can select several threads in the thread selector, in
preparation for reading them, then (while still in the thread selector)
type :T+. In this case trn doesn't prompt you separately for the command to
memorize. This memorizes the message-ID's of all the unread articles in all
the selected threads.
When you next enter the newsgroup, you do not reach the thread selector
immediately, but instead you see a report on the action of the killfile. For
example:
Press the spacebar, and trn gives you the thread selector as usual.
As a thread "ages," trn automatically removes the message-ID's of the older
articles from the killfile, so you don't have to worry about trimming the
killfile to keep it from getting too big.
You can also use the T command to tell trn that you never want to see any
articles in a specified thread or threads. Proceed as in the previous
section (for auto-selecting threads), but give j instead of + as the sub-
command. The specified threads disappear immediately from the thread
selector, hopefully never to be seen again. Whenever you enter the
newsgroup in the future, trn will junk any articles which follow-up to the
ones whose message-ID's have been memorized, and in turn memorize the
message-ID's of the newly-junked articles. This doesn't always work
perfectly, though. Sometimes branches of the discussion become disconnected
from the rest of the thread and pop up in the thread selector again (sort
of like dandelions in a lawn), in which case you have to junk them again.
As in the previous example, when you next enter the newsgroup you see a
report on the action of the killfile:
Pressing the spacebar gives you the thread selector as usual.
Just as with the automatic thread-selection commands, trn removes old
message-ID's from the killfile automatically.
The previous two procedures both work by searching for articles which
follow-up to specific articles whose message-ID's trn has memorized in a
killfile. You can also search automatically for articles by subject, by
author, or by contents; and you can either select them or junk them. To do
this, edit the killfile by hand, placing in it the same search commands that
you would type if you were doing the search yourself, as described in
previous sections.
To edit the killfile for a newsgroup, enter the newsgroup, then press K
while holding down the control key (often called ctrl-K or ^K). This opens
the killfile using your default editor, usually vi. Simply insert the
desired search commands, one per line:
When you're finished editing the killfile, type ^X (if you're using pico) to
save the killfile and return to trn.
The next time you enter the newsgroup, you see a report on the effects of
the killfile, telling you which commands took effect:
The numbers are the local article numbers for the articles which were
selected or junked. Pressing the spacebar takes you to the thread selection
menu, as usual.
Unlike the automatic thread-selection and -junking commands, trn does not
remove any commands which you place in a killfile by hand. You must edit the
killfile and remove them yourself when they are no longer necessary.
If you've been using the T command to auto-select or auto-junk threads,
your killfile will look something like this:
This is the memorized list of message-ID's for articles which were
previously junked. The THRU line indicates how far the killfile has gotten
in processing articles for this newsgroup; when you enter the newsgroup,
trn applies the killfile commands starting at this article number, so it
doesn't have to re-process articles you've already seen or junked.
You should be aware that trn performs killfile commands in the order listed.
Therefore it is possible that an article may be selected by one command but
junked by a following one. If you want the "search" commands to override
the "message-ID" commands, for example, you should arrange them as follows:
Trn has many more features, and can be customized in various ways. The most
complete documention of trn is the man page, which you should be able to
view online by giving the UNIX command man trn. It's about forty pages
long, and some parts of it require you to be somewhat familiar with the
UNIX operating system.
Trn is the supported newsreader on the Alcor system at Concordia. Basic
questions can be asked on the concordia.dept.iits.help newsgroup.
The news.software.readers newsgroup is a good place to ask more advanced
questions and also to pick up the rn killfile-faq, which gives more
information about creating kill files for rn, trn, and strn.
This modified document is available from either Bookstore at Concordia.
Electronic versions (MSWord 6.0, PostScript, and text) are available on
Alcor in the /public/pub/doc/trn-intro directory.
(The following are instructions on how to retrieve the original version of
this document.)
This document is revised periodically. You can get a copy of the latest
version as follows:
Copyright, © 2003,
Concordia University,
(IITS).
Department of Physics and Computer Science
Presbyterian College
Clinton, South Carolina 29325, USA
Matt Ackeret
Jesus Aguillon
David Barr
B.G. Mahesh
Robert Nicholson
Michael O'Henley
Bonnie Ross Contents
Overview of Usenet News
comp for discussions of computer hardware and software (e.g.
comp.sys.mac.apps, for Macintosh application software)
misc for discussions which don't fit anywhere else (e.g. misc.kids)
news for discussions about Usenet news itself: news administration,
creation of new newsgroups, news statistics, etc. (e.g.
news.admin.policy)
rec for discussions about "recreational" topics: sports, movies,
hobbies, etc. (e.g. rec.sport.baseball, rec.travel,
rec.autos.antique)
sci for discussions of science-related topics (e.g. sci.physics)
soc for social and "cultural" discussions relating to various groups
of people (ethnic, national, religious, occupational, etc.) (e.g.
soc.culture.german)
talk for high-traffic, "noisy" discussions of controversial topics
(abortion, religion, guns, etc.) (e.g. talk.politics.soviet)
concordia.general, a general discussion group.
concordia.announce, a moderated group for announcements of interest to
the University community, such as upcoming events.
concordia.dept.iits.help, the best place to find information
about using computer systems managed by IITS.
concordia.test, the approved place to put test messages. The best place
to go for your first attempts at posting.
news.announce.important contains important messages of interest to all
Usenet users. Very few articles appear here.
news.announce.newusers normally contains a standard set of articles with
general information about Usenet, and guidelines for network
etiquette (netiquette). You should read through these articles at
least once.
news.answers contains copies of articles which are periodically posted
to various newsgroups, answering various "Frequently Asked
Questions" (FAQs). These are worth browsing through in order to
get an idea of the range of topics which are discussed on Usenet.
news.newusers.questions contains questions posted by new users and
(hopefully) answers from more knowledgeable users.
Your News Administrator
Overview of the trn Newsreader
Tutorial
Prompts and Commands
====== 3 unread articles in comp.sys.mac.comm -- read now? [+ynq]
Universal Commands
Getting Started
$ trn
Trying to set up a .newsrc file--running newsetup...
[...long introductory message...]
Creating /home/jtbell/.newsrc to be used by news programs.
Done.
(Revising soft pointers -- be patient.)
Unread news in news.announce.newusers 32 articles
Unread news in pc.newusers.info 7 articles
====== 32 unread articles in news.announce.newusers -- read now? [+ynq]
$ tr \: \! < .newsrc > .newsrc.new
$ rm .newsrc
$ mv .newsrc.new .newsrc
Subscribing to Newsgroups
====== 32 unread articles in news.announce.newusers -- read now? [+ynq] g
rec.travel.europe
Newsgroup rec.travel.europe not in .newsrc -- subscribe? [ynYN] y
Put newsgroup where? [$^.Lq] (press space bar)
====== 307 unread articles in rec.travel.europe--read now? [+ynq]
====== 307 unread articles in rec.travel.europe -- read now? [+ynq] u
Unsubscribed to newsgroup rec.travel.europe
====== 241 unread articles in comp.sys.mac.system -- read now? [+ynq]
====== 241 unread articles in comp.sys.mac.system -- read now? [+ynq] g
rec.travel.europe
Newsgroup rec.travel.europe is unsubscribed -- resubscribe? [yn] y
====== 308 unread articles in rec.travel.europe -- read now? [+ynq]
Reading a Newsgroup
====== 100 unread articles in comp.sys.mac.comm--read now? [+ynq]
comp.sys.mac.comm 100 articles
a Forrest Thiessen 2 GeoPort Adaptor Availability?
Sean McMains
b Steve Wall 2 >What happened to White Knight?
David R Bosso
d John Abercrombie 1 Zoom 14.4 Modem driver
e Claes Magnusson 2 >Ethernet and acceleration on same board for
IIsi?
John Werner
f JAMES N MERRICKS 1 Geoport & Zterm
g Fred Morris 1 >Help transferring from VAX to Mac?
i C B Kidwell 6 >MacSLIP 2.0 arrives
Jerry Goldstein
Donald L. Nash
Rick Watson
Donald L. Nash
Greg Ferguson
Tony Huang 1 >MacSLIP 2.0 and FaxSTF
j Jerry Goldstein 1 Looking for certain binhex prg.
l Chris Reid 1 >using 'macps'
o Jeffrey Scorsone 1 Help: newbie on the net...
(Mail) -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 19% [>Z] --
comp.sys.mac.comm 100 articles
a Forrest Thiessen 2 GeoPort Adaptor Availability?
Sean McMains
b Steve Wall 2 >What happened to White Knight?
David R Bosso
d John Abercrombie 1 Zoom 14.4 Modem driver
e Claes Magnusson 2 >Ethernet and acceleration on same board for
IIsi?
John Werner
f JAMES N MERRICKS 1 Geoport & Zterm
g Fred Morris 1 >Help transferring from VAX to Mac?
i C B Kidwell 6 >MacSLIP 2.0 arrives
Jerry Goldstein
Donald L. Nash Rick Watson Donald L. Nash
Greg Ferguson
Tony Huang 1 >MacSLIP 2.0 and FaxSTF
j Jerry Goldstein 1 Looking for certain binhex prg.
l Chris Reid 1 >using 'macps'
o Jeffrey Scorsone 1 Help: newbie on the net...
r P Coordinator 1 >Novell Mac NLM 3.11
s Vladimir Butenko 1 >Global Village Gold fax and Hayes Connect.....it
work?
(Mail) -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 21% [>Z] --
comp.sys.mac.comm 100 articles
a 2 GeoPort Adaptor Availability?
b 2 >What happened to White Knight?
d 1 Zoom 14.4 Modem driver
e 2 >Ethernet and acceleration on same board for IIsi?
f 1 Geoport & Zterm
g 1 >Help transferring from VAX to Mac?
i 6 >MacSLIP 2.0 arrives
1 >MacSLIP 2.0 and FaxSTF
j 1 Looking for certain binhex prg.
l 1 >using 'macps'
o 1 Help: newbie on the net...
r 1 >Novell Mac NLM 3.11
s 1 >Global Village Gold fax and Hayes Connect... does it work?
t 1 >How to receive Faxes and ARA using a GV Teleport
u 3 Anybody have MacVoice?
v 3 System 6 chooser -- maximum printer limitation
w 2 Question about 14,400 modem
x 1 Mac Comm Software packages 4 sale
y 4 >SupraFaxModem v.32bis Experts Please Read *****
(Mail) -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 35% [>Z] --
comp.sys.mac.comm #8184 (1 + 98 more) (1)+-(1)+-(1)--(1)--(1)
From: smwall@pica.army.mil (Steve Wall) | \-(1)--(2)
[1] Re: What happened to White Knight? \-(1)--(1)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.comm -(1)+-[1]
Organization: PM Paladin |-(1)
Date: Thu Sep 16 17:14:09 EDT 1993 \-[1]
Lines: 20
In article
Date: Thu Sep 16 17:14:09 EDT 1993 \-[1]
Lines: 20
In article
Posting a Followup Article
misc.test #851 (0 + 13 more) [1]
From: as806@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave McKissock)
[1] My 1st test!
Date: Sat Mar 27 07:34:54 EST 1993
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
Lines: 2
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu
This is my first message. WOW!
End of article 851 (of 864)--what next? [npq]
At the end-of-article prompt, type f to post a followup article:
End of article 851 (of 864)--what next? [npq] f
Are you starting an unrelated topic? [ynq]
Are you starting an unrelated topic? [ynq] n (and press return or enter)
(leaving cbreak mode; cwd=/home/jtbell)
Invoking command: Pnews -h /home/jtbell/.rnhead
This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not
thousands of
dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] y (and press
return or enter)
Prepared file to include [none]: (press return or enter to accept the
default, none)
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article
Newsgroups: misc.test
Subject: Re: My 1st test!
Summary:
Expires:
References: <1p1hle$sn9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
Cc:
[ Read 14 lines ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article Modified
Newsgroups: misc.test
Subject: Re: My 1st test!
Summary:
Expires:
References: <1p1hle$sn9@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
Cc:
Congratulations!
--
Jon Bell
Your article's newsgroup:
misc.test For testing of network software. Very boring.
Check spelling, Send, Abort, Edit, or List? s (and press return or
enter)
(re-entering cbreak mode)
End of article 851 (of 864)--what next? [npq]
misc.test #865 (0 + 13 more) (1)--[1]
From: jtbell@presby.edu (Jon Bell)
[1] Re: My 1st test!
Date: Sat Mar 27 22:55:02 EST 1993
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Congratulations!
--
Jon Bell
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article
Newsgroups: misc.test
Subject: Re: a test
Summary:
Expires:
References: <2bb4fe54.crud@crud.mn.org>
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
In article <2bb4fe54.crud@crud.mn.org> trashman@crud.mn.org (Barry
Schwartz) writes:
>I desire to receive some test echos.
>
>--
>Barry Schwartz trashman@crud.mn.org
[ Read 18 lines ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article Modified
Newsgroups: misc.test
Subject: Re: a test
Summary:
Expires:
References: <2bb4fe54.crud@crud.mn.org>
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
In article <2bb4fe54.crud@crud.mn.org> trashman@crud.mn.org (Barry
Schwartz) writes:
>I desire to receive some test echos.
You've got one...
--
Jon Bell
Beginning a New Discussion Thread
====== 9 unread articles in misc.test--read now? [+ynq] .f (and press
return or enter)
Subject:
(Mail) -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 35% [>Z] --
:p (and press return or enter)
Subject:
End of article 1331 (of 1333)--what next? [npq] :p (and press return or
enter)
Subject:
End of article 1331 (of 1333)--what next? [npq] f
Are you starting an unrelated topic? [ynq] y (and press return or enter)
Subject:
concordia same as local
mtl Montreal area
qc Quebec
can Canada
na North America
world Everywhere!
Subject: A New Thread Begins...
Distribution: local
(leaving cbreak mode; cwd=/home/jtbell)
Invoking command: Pnews -h /home/jtbell/.rnhead
This program posts news to machines throughout the local organization.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] y (and press
return or enter)
Prepared file to include [none]: (press return or enter)
Replying by E-mail
Part III: Miscellaneous Topics
New Newsgroups
$ trn
Unread news in news.announce.newgroups 5 articles
Unread news in news.future 4 articles
Unread news in news.groups 14 articles
Unread news in news.newusers.questions 2 articles
Unread news in news.software.b 1 article
etc.
Checking for new newsgroups...
Newsgroup comp.society not in .newsrc--subscribe? [ynYN]
Newsgroup comp.society not in .newsrc--subscribe? [ynYN] y
Put newsgroup where? [$^.L]
Put newsgroup where? [$^.L] (press space)
Newsgroup comp.society.cu-digest not in .newsrc--subscribe? [ynYN]
Rearranging the Newsgroup List
====== 2 unread articles in news.admin.misc--read now? [+ynq] g
sci.physics
====== 2 unread articles in sci.physics--read now? [+ynq] m
Put newsgroup where? [$^Lq]
Put newsgroup where? [$^Lq] 0
******** 2 unread articles in sci.physics--read now? [+ynq] L
# Status Newsgroup
0 2 sci.physics: 1-4069
1 (READ) junk: 1-165
2 2 news.admin.misc: 1-1006
3 (READ) news.admin.policy: 1-3507
4 (READ) news.admin.technical: 1-42
5 (READ) news.announce.important:1
6 (READ) news.announce.newgroups: 1-311
7 (READ) news.announce.newusers: 1-66
8 4 news.answers: 1-2079
9 (READ) news.config: 1-67
10 1 news.future: 1-300
11 11 news.groups: 1-4966
12 (READ) news.lists.ps-maps: 1-75
13 (READ) news.lists: 1-154
14 (READ) news.misc: 1-328
15 (READ) news.newsites: 1-52
16 2 news.newusers.questions: 1-1693
17 (READ) news.software.b: 1-775
18 3 news.software.nntp: 1-727
19 (READ) news.software.readers: 1-740
20 (UNSUB) comp.answers! 1-17,35,37,39,45-46,81,130,193,238
21 5 comp.admin.policy: 1-192
[Type space to continue]
$ sort .newsrc > .newsrc.sorted
$ rm .newsrc
$ mv .newsrc.sorted .newsrc
Anatomy of a News Article
sci.physics #12781 (12 + 153 more) [1]+-[1]--[1]--[2]+-[2]--[2]
From: rama.creol.ucf.edu (Frank Effenberger) | \-[2]+-[2]
Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.optics | \-[2]
[1] Re: Stupid Question: Why does light |
+ diffract??? |
Date: Tue Oct 12 11:42:39 EDT 1993 \-[1]
Organization: Center Research Electro-Optics
+ Lasers
In article <29di6h$kvi@huon.itd.adelaide.edu.au>,
dabbott@aelmg.adelaide.edu.au (Derek Abbott) wrote:
>
>
> Ripples on the surface of water diffract as they "ooze" through
> a slit. It's easy to see how this must happen when you consider the
> constraints caused by forces between water molecules.
>
> However, with light there is now no physical medium or internal forces
(?)
>
It has been found that light, radio waves, and x-rays are all forms of the
same thing: Electromagnetic waves. It has also been found that electric and
magnetic fields are coupled vector fields that obey four simple partial
differential equations: the Maxwell equations. If you take the Maxwell
equations, and apply the appropriate boundary conditions on the solutions,
you will find that the answer you get explains diffraction.
As far as the question: 'Do we know why?', one needs to invoke ontological
arguments. Let's just say that Classical Electromagnetic theory has great
predictive power, and is for the most part correct. (It has already been
superceeded by a higher theory, however, this higher theory is of interest
only to theoretical physicists).
I guess the ultimate answer to "why does light diffract?' is:
Light diffracts because it does!
--
Frank Effenberger - *The* Super Slacker
'The light of Wyatt's Torch was the last
light they ever saw on this earth' - A.R
End of article 12781 (of 13105) -- what next? [npq]
Creating a Signature File
$ pico .signature
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: .signature
(single blank line at the top of the screen)
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.signature Modified
Jon Bell
$ chmod a+r .signature
Changing Your Default Editor
EDITOR="vi"
export EDITOR
VISUAL="vi"
export VISUAL
setenv EDITOR "vi"
setenv VISUAL "vi"
Re-Reading Articles
news.newusers.questions 170 read articles
a- 2 FAQ: How to find people's E-mail addresses
b- 3 Welcome to news.newusers.questions! (weekly posting)
d- 1 rn KILL file FAQ
3 trn and Re:
e- 1 >Tolkien site...
f- 2 >This is a test, please reply
g- 2 >Modem question
i- 1 >Software Copy Protection for PC, Help Please
j- 3 >This is a TEST, please reply...
l- 12 >How do you stop harrassing e-mail?
o- 4 >Filtering mail
r- 1 >** 14-year old boy wants ...
s- 1 >Background news filter
t- 1 >TQM/summary
u- 2 >What's a daemon, he asks
v- 1 >ftp question
w- 1 >Question : How to post news anonymously ?
x- 4 TAR
z- 5 What is the FAQ??
(Mail) -- Select threads (date order) -- Top 29% [>Z] --
====== 1 unread article in news.admin.policy--read now? [+ynq] g
soc.culture.nordic
====== 0 unread articles in soc.culture.nordic--read now? [ynq] U
Set unread: +select or all? [+an] + (or space)
Canceling and Superseding Articles
Saving Articles
(Mail) End of article 14 (of 20)--what next? [npq] s tidbits
File /home/jtbell/News/tidbits doesn't exist--
use mailbox format? [ynq]
(Mail) End of article 14 (of 20)--what next? [npq] s
File /home/jtbell/News/Soc.culture.nordic doesn't exist--
use mailbox format? [ynq]
File /home/jtbell/News/tidbits doesn't exist--
use mailbox format? [ynq] y
Saved to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/tidbits
(Mail) End of article 14 (of 20)--what next? [npq]
(Mail) End of article 20 (of 20)--what next? [npq] s tidbits
Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/tidbits
(Mail) End of article 20 (of 20)--what next? [npq]
:s articles
1028
File /home/jtbell/News/articles doesn't exist--
use mailbox format? [ynq] y
Saved to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
1043 Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
1165 Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
1178 Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
1234 Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
1054 Appended to mailbox /home/jtbell/News/articles
[Type space or a command]
$ cd News
$ cd ..
Reading Saved Articles with an E-Mail Program
$ mailx -f articles
mailx version 3.03 01/18/88 Type ? for help.
"articles": 6 messages 6 new
>N 1 Lawrence D'Oliveir Sun Apr 11 22:53 27/1167 Re: More awful names for
N 2 Eggert Thorlacius Sun Apr 11 22:53 32/1278 Re: More awful names for
N 3 Chuck Hoffman Sun Apr 11 22:53 27/980 Re: More awful names for
N 4 Landon Dyer Sun Apr 11 22:53 40/1204 Re: More awful names for
N 5 Matt Mora Sun Apr 11 22:53 35/997 Re: More awful names for
N 6 Manuel Veloso Sun Apr 11 22:53 28/1189 Re: More awful names for
?
$ mv articles ../mail
$ mv News/articles mail
SAVEDIR="$HOME/mail"
export SAVEDIR
setenv SAVEDIR "$HOME/mail"
Posting the Same Article to Several Newsgroups (Crossposting)
====== 48 unread articles in misc.test--read now? [+ynq] .$
Threading 3 articles...
End of newsgroup misc.test. (48 articles still unread)
(Mail) What next? [npq] f
Subject: Crossposting test
Distribution: local
(leaving cbreak mode; cwd=/home/jtbell)
Invoking command: Pnews -h /home/jtbell/.rnhead
This program posts news to machines throughout the local organization.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] y (and press
return or enter)
Prepared file to include [none]: (press return or enter)
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article
Newsgroups: misc.test
Subject: Crossposting test
Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution: local
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
(etc.)
[ Read 11 lines ]
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/.article Modified
Newsgroups: misc.test,alt.test
Subject: Crossposting test
Summary:
Expires:
Sender:
Followup-To:
Distribution: local
Organization: Presbyterian College, Clinton SC, USA
Keywords:
^G Get Help ^O WriteOut ^R Read File ^Y Prev Pg ^K Cut Text ^C Cur Pos
^X Exit ^J Justify ^W Where is ^V Next Pg ^U UnCut Text^T To Spell
redirecting Followups
Moderated Newsgroups
Searching for Information (Introduction)
Searching for Newsgroups within trn
====== 1 unread article in news.admin.misc -- read now? [+ynq] l
physics
Completely unsubscribed newsgroups:
bionet.prof-society.biophysics
sci.med.physics
sci.physics.computational.fluid-dynamics
sci.physics.electromag
sci.physics.fusion
sci.physics.particle
sci.physics.plasma
[Type return to continue]
Unsubscribed but mentioned in /home/jtbell/.newsrc:
sci.physics.accelerators
sci.physics.research
====== 1 unread article in news.admin.misc -- read now? [+ynq]
Searching for Newsgroups outside of trn
send usenet/news.lists/List_of_Active_Newsgroups,_Part_I
send usenet/news.lists/List_of_Active_Newsgroups,_Part_II
send usenet/news.lists/Alternative_Newsgroup_Hierarchies,_Part_I
send usenet/news.lists/Alternative_Newsgroup_Hierarchies,_Part_II
Searching for Articles on Particular Subjects
/string/+
comp.lang.perl 32 articles
a 2 perl 4 bug? please help!
b 1 >Trouble with TkPerl5 and Perl5a11d
d 1 >Changing ARGV ?
e 3 >Unix tower of babble tcl/awk/perl -- why not just lisp?
f 1 >Perl5a11b, variable scopes/lifetimes, o
g 1 >playing with a mail filter..
i 1 Variable assignment problems (w/ du)
1 >Bug report 11d
j 1 perl script executable? and calling perl from C?
l 1 help!!-script to read and output the input from Mosaic Forms
o 1 Problem installing on NeXT 2.1 and 3.2
r 1 >Logical And / Round to Whole Numbers
s 1 MS-DOS Perl with DBM/NDBM Built In
t 1 Perl version of Supersrv ?
u 1 >Talking to HP4SiMx
v 3 >Comparing two dates?
w 2 >Perl5a11d Bug
x 1 >PERL as a first programming language?
y 2 how stable is perl5??
/bug/+
/bug/+
9474 Selected
9483 Selected
9485 Selected
9494 Selected
9495 Selected
Done
Selected 5 articles.
[Type space or a command]
comp.lang.perl 32 articles
a+ 2 perl 4 bug? please help!
b 1 >Trouble with TkPerl5 and Perl5a11d
d 1 >Changing ARGV ?
e 3 >Unix tower of babble tcl/awk/perl -- why not just lisp?
f 1 >Perl5a11b, variable scopes/lifetimes, o
g 1 >playing with a mail filter..
i* 1 Variable assignment problems (w/ du)
1 >Bug report 11d
j 1 perl script executable? and calling perl from C?
l 1 help!!-script to read and output the input from Mosaic Forms
o 1 Problem installing on NeXT 2.1 and 3.2
r 1 >Logical And / Round to Whole Numbers
s 1 MS-DOS Perl with DBM/NDBM Built In
t 1 Perl version of Supersrv ?
u 1 >Talking to HP4SiMx
v 3 >Comparing two dates?
w+ 2 >Perl5a11d Bug
x 1 >PERL as a first programming language?
y 2 how stable is perl5??
-- Select threads (date order) -- Top 81% [>Z] --
/bug/++
/M\*A\*S\*H/+
Searching for articles by particular people
From: smwall@pica.army.mil (Steve Wall)
/Steve Wall/f:+
/smwall@pica\.army\.mil/f:+
/smwall@pica\.army\.mil/HFrom:+
Searching for Text
/banana/a:+
gbanana
Junking Articles
/garbage/j
/Steve Wall/f:j
/Steve Wall/f:,
Selecting and Junking Articles Automatically(Introduction)
Selecting Threads Automatically
Memorize thread command: [+.j,cC]
Processing memorized commands...
44 auto-select commands.
Selected 2 articles.
[Type space to continue]
Junking Threads Automatically
Processing memorized commands...
13 auto-kill commands.
Killed 1 article.
[Type space to continue]
Selecting or Junking Articles Automatically Using Search Commands
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/News/rec/music/classical/KILL
/Beethoven/+
/Serial/j
(etc.)
Processing memorized commands...
/Beethoven/+
3726 Selected
3729 Selected
3730 Selected
3735 Selected
3740 Selected
/Serial/j
3734 Junked
Selected 5 articles.
Killed 1 article.
[Type space to continue]
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/News/rec/music/classical/KILL
THRU 31298
<1994Mar9.020649.10313@virginia.edu> T+
UW PICO(tm) 2.4 File: /home/jtbell/News/rec/music/classical/KILL
THRU 31298
<1994Mar9.020649.10313@virginia.edu> T+
Further Information
Obtaining This Document
Author: Jon Bell, Presbyterian College, South Carolina
Credits: Kevin Neden, Dana Echtner
Maintained by:
webdoc@alcor.concordia.ca
Last update: 1998/06/19 -- Dana Echtner
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