News Readers:

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News Readers:

News groups

News groups provide an on-line forum for countless topics, ranging from Celtic culture to the latest computer operating systems. Rather than having the messages sent to your e-mail address (as with a listserver), the messages are sent to an intermediary computer which stores them and allows you to access them. This document provides an introduction to using news readers such as Tin to participate in news groups. Essentially, these news readers are clients, software which allows you to access the news groups you want. You will read how to subscribe to and read news groups, unsubscribe, and post messages, as well as how to save messages to your UNIX account. In this document, commands printed in bold should be entered by you exactly as printed. Special keys, like the control key, are contained in chevrons (< >). Keys and key combinations are bold.

News group Listings

News group names are hierarchically organized from general to specific. The first level is the most general, the second level is more specific, and so on. News group names can have five or more levels, although most have two or three. The first level shows the main topic of the news group, as indicated by the following chart:This list contains the most common types of news groups, but it is by no means complete. The exact nature of a news group is difficult to predict judging only by its name. Some news groups that sound interesting have poor discussions or few postings. On the other hand, you will be able to avoid news groups that don't interest you simply by looking at their names. The only really effective way of determining the nature of a news group is to read the postings for a while and see for yourself.

Be aware that most of the news groups on the Internet are not moderated -- anyone can post anything he or she wants! Often, you will find news articles or even whole groups that offend you. You can usually tell ahead of time that this is the case and avoid the offending material.

Flame Wars and other Cold War Artifacts

If you don't like to receive abuse in your mail box, a few rules will help you when you start posting news articles of your own:

Netscape or Explorer

One way to access news groups is through Netscape or Explorer, a news reader available on within your web browsing software. To begin reading News, simply select the option under Windows labeled NewsThe first time you enter your news reader, a very long list of news groups will be listed as a default. You can alter the list to suit your interests either by subscribing orunsubscribing to different groups.

To unsubscribe use the up and down arrows to highlight the group you want to remove from your list and then type u. Tin will mark that entry with a u on the far left hand column. And the next time you use Tin that group will not appear on the news group list. This procedure is quite time-consuming because of the number of news groups from which you will have to unsubscribe. Depending on the number of news group you wish to subscribe to, modifying your .newsrc file may be more convenient. To do this see the related section below.

Occasionally, when you start Tin it will inform you that there are new news groups. You can either go through these new groups one at a time and choose whether or not to subscribe by hitting y or n at the prompt, or you can skip this process by hitting q.

Getting Help

Tin has good on-screen help. At any time, you can enter h to receive a list of commands and a description of what action they perform.

Finding news groups in Tin

To move to another news group, either select it by using the up and down arrow keys. This may take a while if you are subscribed to all 4000+ news groups. You can use the / key to move around your list. The / key is a general search key in Tin; whenever you hit it, Tin asks you for a word to search for. To move to a new news group, enter part of the name of that news group and hit return . If you don't know the name, you can surf news groups by guessing a likely word that matches your interests, e.g., chess.

For example, if you hit the / key to begin your search, and type the word biology, Tin will cycle you through some of the following news groups. To repeatedly search for more groups that match the word biology, just keep hitting the / key. It remembers your recent search, so you don't have to type biology again. Here are some of the groups you might see:

bionet.biology.computational
bionet.biology.n2-fixation
bionet.biology.tropical

Reading Articles in Tin

Once you find a group you are looking for, you can enter it by hitting the right arrow key. You will see a list of articles, along with the names of the people who posted them. To read an article, select it and hit the right arrow key to start reading. At any time, you may exit an article by hitting the left arrow key; this will return you to the article selection mode. To move up and down through an article, use your up and down arrow keys.

A sample article listing looks like this:

     11  +  Isn't Tin Great???                     Yung Jin Chew
From left to right, you will see a number for the article, a '+' (which means you haven't read it), a subject line, and the name of the article's author. After you've looked at an article, the '+' disappears.
Threads
Often, articles posted to news groups will get many responses. The original article and all its responses are grouped together in Tin. Collectively, these articles are known as a thread. You can think of them as a conversation on a certain topic. When you look at threads in Tin, they will look like this:
     1  + 38 Origin - CD-only forever!            Yung Jin Chew
You'll notice the '+38' indicates that there are currently 38 different articles in this thread.

To read a thread, select the article and hit the right arrow key. The first article will then appear. To go to the subsequent articles, either hit the down arrow key (this moves you through the thread one page of text at a time) or hit n to skip the article you're reading and move on to the next one. To get back to a list of the news groups articles and threads, simply hit q at any time.

Searching
Searching at the article level works exactly the same as searching for different groups. Simply hit the / key and type in a word you want to look for. Tin will search every subject line for matches and then move you to the first match. To search for another article that matches your keyword, hit the / key again (you'll note it remembers what you are looking for; you don't need to type in your keyword again).
Saving Articles
You should learn how to save articles to your UNIX account because they have a limited life span in the news group (about 2 weeks). To save disk space, all articles get deleted when they are old, and then can't read them. To save an article to your account at any point when you are reading it, hit s. Tin will then ask you if you want to save the entire thread or the single article, and also what you want to name the file. Saved articles are automatically placed in your News subdirectory. If you want to read saved articles, exit Tin, change (cd) to the News directory, and call up your favorite editor, like pico, or just use the more or less commands). If the foregoing sentence made your head hurt, you probably need to grab the handout entitled UNIX: Getting Started (cus01) to learn some basic UNIX commands.

Responding To and Posting Articles

You can send your opinions to the world in three different ways in Tin. If you are reading an article and want to respond to the author only, hit r at any time while you are reading it. This will automatically address an e-mail message to the article's author and call up your normal e-mail editor. Send the e-mail message like any other.

The second way to respond to a news article is to send your comments to the entire group. To follow up on an article to the news group, press f at any time while you are reading an article.

Finally, if you want to post a new article to the news group which is not in response to another article, enter w at the article selection mode level. The article selection mode level is when you are inside a group looking at all the different articles not looking at a specific article or thread. You will be prompted for a bunch of information about your post, but only two things are essential. First, you must enter a subject when asked. This subject line becomes the title for your article. Second, you must type in the word world when it asks you what the distribution is. If you don't, your post will only go to users in the UNC domain, that is, people with accounts with addresses ending in unc.edu.

Mailing articles

If you would like to e-mail an article to someone (including yourself) select the article and enter m. You will be prompted for an e-mail address. After you have entered this, you will be asked whether you wish to edit the message or send it untouched. This feature is helpful if there is an article you think a friend would be interested in, or if you want to save a copy in your own files. This is an easy, alternative way to save an article to your UNIX account to be accessed through your e-mail editor.

Modifying your .newsrc file

When you first enter Tin, it will automatically bring up all the news groups that exist in the world (currently, there are more than 4000). Again, the easiest way to go to your favorite news group is by typing / and searching for a news group by name. However, if you want to have a specific set of news groups automatically loaded when you start Tin and to exclude the rest, you need to modify what is called your .newsrc file. To perform this procedure, enter the command pico .newsrc from the UNIX system prompt. If this file does not already exist, this command will create it as a new file. In either case, edit the file so that it only includes the news groups you are interested in:
     PICO 1.4                                 File: .newsrc

     rec.music.beatles
     rec.music.classical
     rec.music.bluenote
The preceding lines contain the names of groups in the order in which you want them to appear when you log on to Tin. You must pay close attention to case and spacing. The entries must match exactly. If you have problems performing this step, your best bet is to take the UNIX: Getting Started class or grab the handout cus01.

Other News Readers

There are a few other news readers that you can currently use to participate in news groups at UNC. Both Pine and Netscape allow you to read and post articles while in these non-news group specific applications. You may find them more convenient to use, since you could read your news group articles without exiting an e-mail or Netscape session.

Pine

Pine can be easily configured to read and post news group articles . To set Pine up for news, from the Pine Main Menu, type s to access the Setup screen, and then c to enter the Config screen. Using the down arrow key, scroll down three menu options to the "nntp-server" line. Use a (Add Value), and when prompted, enter news.oit.unc.edu, then press <Return>. Type e to exit Config. This should return you to the Main menu. It is necessary to quit (q) Pine for this change to take effect. If you are not comfortable enough in Pine to do the preceding, you should probably take the Pine/Pico class at the OIT Training Center or get the handout Pine/Pico: Introduction (iep01).

Accessing your News groups

Upon re-entering Pine, type <L> to access the Folder List. Hit <Return> to select expanded list. If this is the first time that you are using the news, Pine will prompt you with the following message:
     No news state found, will create your.username/.newsrc 
Using the down arrow key or the space bar, scroll below the line which reads:
     News-collection  <News on news.oit.unc.edu>  (Remote)
You should see the following two lines:
     [ ** Empty List **  Select Here to Try Re-Expanding ]
     [ Now in collection < News on news.oit.unc.edu > ]
If you have previously accessed news groups with Pine or another news reader, you will see a list of the news groups to which you already subscribe. In either case you will do the following to access the groups and articles.

Enter a (Subscribe) to be prompted for the name of the news group you wish to wish to access. Enter part or all of the name and <Cntl>+x> for a list of corresponding groups, or enter <Cntl>+t to see a list of all available groups. Scroll down this list using the arrow keys, or use the w (Whereis) command to jump to a specific string. When you find one you wish to join, type s (Select). Pine exits the list and prompts you with the following:

     Enter group to subscribe to: your selection
Check your selection and press the <Return> key to accept. Once a group is selected, use v (ViewFldr) to access it. You are now in a window similar to Index Folder, with a corresponding set of commands listed at the bottom of the page. Articles will appear as separate messages in the order of most recent posting on top. You can save, export or post a reply from this menu in the same manner you would save, export or reply to a personal e-mail message in Pine.

Accessing Threads

One feature of standard news readers is the ability to thread discussions. These news readers group together all articles pertaining to the same topic, allowing one to follow a conversation by merely selecting the next posting. It is possible to duplicate this feature in Pine, but at a cost. Normally, Pine is set up to sort by date, with the newest letters placed at the top of your INBOX. By entering the Setup screen (hit m, to get to the main menu, then s, c), and pressing the space bar 4 times, you should see an entry for OrderedSubj. Scroll down one line with the down arrow key until this line is highlighted, and select this option by entering s. Exit the Setup menu with e (Exit). You do not need to exit Pine for this option to take effect. From this point on, Pine will order the contents of your News groups according to titles. Unfortunately, Pine will also order the contents of your INBOX in this manner, replacing the default ordering by time of arrival.

The IAB Data Collection thanks the University of North Carolina for provding the basic layout for these web pages. The original document was a web page from the The Office of Information Technology at The University of North Carolina that has been modified/updated for general use. The information contained in these pages is intended to help beginning internet users to use the World Wide Web (WWW). It is written to help IAB members, State Board Members, and others find and use information on the internet. Please send any comments/suggestions to Ernie_Patterson@unc.edu.