| Pine is Good News for Newsgroup Users | ||
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 | Pine - Advanced Features |  |
| Pine is Good News for Newsgroup Users | ||
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| | Pine - Advanced Features | |
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Entire document Available as PDF |
In addition to being a powerful and flexible e-mail client, Pine is also a full-featured Usenet News reader/poster. Using Pine to read the Usenet groups also has the added benefit of allowing you to "kill two birds with one stone"; you don't have to learn to use a separate program for newsgroups.
Neither CNS nor the University of Florida author or edit material on these news groups and therefore assume no responsibility for their content.
The following section is adapted by CNS from documentation provided by the University of Washington.
"Pine and Pico are trademarks of the University of Washington. Copyright 1993-1994 University of Washington. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute the (Pine) software and its documentation for any purpose and without fee to the University of Washington is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name of the University of Washington not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, written prior permission. This software is made available as is."
CNS has configured Pine on NERSP so that everyone on the system automatically has access to Internet news groups via the server usenet.cns.ufl.edu; this is set for you by default when using Pine in NERSP. Here are steps for using this facility:
After starting Pine, choose the FOLDER LIST by pressing L.
On the COLLECTION LIST screen, select News on usenet.cns.ufl.edu/nntp (you can press the <Spacebar> to move to this folder-collection, which will be the last item in
the COLLECTION LIST screen.)
Press <Return> to select the [View Cltn] (that's "view collection") command. It may take a while (several seconds, depending upon how busy the system is) to process the command. When it is
complete, you will see a screen headed News groups on usenet.cns.ufl.edu/nntp, similar to this example:
Note that in the example above, no news groups are listed; if you have used a different newsreader on NERSP previously, you may already have some groups listed; however, most users (especially new NERSP users) will have an "empty list."
Before you can actually read and post to news groups using Pine, you will need to A Add some news groups to your list. You may think of "adding a newsgroup to your list" as being similar to "subscribing" to the group. However, this sort of
subscription is different from a magazine or newspaper subscription; your name is not put on a mailing list, and you don't get a monthly bill! All you do when you a newsgroup to your list, is
to make it available for you to read (and post to, if you so desire). You can add as many or as few newsgroups as you wish. The reason for this step is that there are SO MANY newsgroups! There are THOUSANDS of newsgroups available on NERSP, and wading
through them can be an overwhelming task. It is best if you know in advance which newsgroups you wish to add; however, you can use Pine's built-in search facility to search (by name) for groups of interest.A Add
Press to add (more) newsgroups to your news subscription file. If you know the name of the group to which you wish to subscribe, enter it at the prompt and press <Return>. If
you don't know the exact name of the group, type in a word that you think might be part of the group-name, to get a list of matching groups. Select (highlight, using your <Tab> or arrow keys to move through the offered list of groups)
the desired group and press <Return>. Pine will then move that group-name to the bottom of the screen, where it will be shown as the completion to the prompt:A Add
Enter newsgroup name (or partial name to get a
list): your.news.group.name.here
Press <Enter> to add this newsgroup to your list. Repeat this step (4) to add more groups, if desired. To see a list of all available newsgroups, after using the command , press
<Ctrl>-T (A AddTo All Grps) [NOTE: It can take up to 10 minutes, depending on how busy the system is, for the full group list to display.].
Once you have newsgroups displayed in the FOLDER LIST, you may select them just like mail folders.
One difference between news and (personal) mail folders: while you can mark news messages Deleted, just like with mail, you may not actually them from the newsgroup folder. Instead, you
mayX eXpunge eXclude them from view, using the X command. In order to remain compatible with other news readers, Pine uses the .newsrc news subscription file. However, this file can record very
little message-state information. The Deleted flag is the only message status flag preserved between sessions. See the section on "Special Files" in Chapter 29 for more information on .*rc files.
When you to a news message, Pine will ask if you want toR Reply Follow-up to news group(s), Reply via email to author or Both? And, when the current folder is a
newsgroup and you use the command, Pine will ask if you want toC Compose Post to current newsgroup? Even if you say "no" (you don't want to post to the
newsgroup), you may manually enter a newsgroup name in the Newsgrps: header field, after exposing that header in the Composer by pressing <Control>-R when your cursor is in the header-area of the
Compose Message screen.
If you don't want your subscribed newsgroups to be displayed in alphabetical order, enable the "news-read-in-newsrc-order" feature (under Setup -->
Configure), then manually edit your .newsrc file to the order you prefer.
In newsgroups it is not possible to actually expunge messages marked as deleted, so Pine will normally suppress them from the FOLDER INDEX. However, the & UnXclude command--available
only when viewing a newsgroup index--will restore them to the FOLDER INDEX display, and will make them disappear again.X eXclude
Remember that when you see Empty List for news folders in your FOLDER LIST, you need to use the command to subscribe to the
news groups of interest to you (you must repeat the command to subscribe to each additional newsgroup).A Add
For those who miss having new messages marked with an N in the MESSAGE INDEX, try the news-approximates-new-status feature (under Setup
--> Configure). Read the help text that goes with it, though, so you don't get surprised when some messages you've seen before show an N again.
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