Accessing Newsgroups

      News is an open forum through which many different people can communicate. There are many different types of newsgroups that cover many different types of discussions. Many of the different classes will have their own newsgroups through which discussions about class-related material can be carried out.

      You will find groups from cmi.classifieds for buying and selling just about anything, to uiuc.general for discussions on just about any topic. There are many more uiuc groups that cover all types of information about what is happening here at UIUC. In addition, there will be class newsgroups available.These will fall under the category uiuc.class. For example,uiuc.class.cs200 will be the newsgroup that covers CS 200 discussions.

      News is much like being able to subscribe to different newspapers across the country. You can subscribe and unsubscribe to any newsgroup that you want to at any time. You will only see news from those groups to which you subscribe, and will never see news from those groups to which you do not. In addition, all newsgroups contain articles (which are really just notes and responses to those notes). Each article is numbered, and you are always shown all unread articles when you first start reading a newsgroup. News can tell what you are subscribed and unsubscribed to by a file that is located in your home directory called .newsrc. Inside the .newsrc file is a list of all the newsgroups that are available at your site. In addition, there are characters and symbols associated with each newsgroup that determine whether or not you are subscribed to a group, and what articles are in a group that you have not read yet.

cmi.classifieds: for purpose of selling or buying just about anything.

uiuc.announce: gives out information about activities around campus.

uiuc.org.ews: to ask questions about anything related to the use of worksations, and find out about machine down-time and software updates.

uiuc.general: group that can be used to exchange information for just about anything.

uiuc.class.cs###: CS class newsgroup which is useful to ask questions to TA's and professors or even among students, usually about MP's.(ex: for cs101 : uiuc.class.cs101)

      There are several different ways that a user can read news. In general, these programs belong to a class called newsreaders. There are several different newsreaders available. They are netscape news, pine, tin, nn, and xrn. Each will be discussed below, and each has its own unique characteristics.

      Netscape is the easiest way to read newsgroups. While running Netscape, user only has to click on the Window menu and select the Netscape News option.It will open up a new window with Netscape News as the title. To subscribe a specific newsgroup, user has to click on the File menu and choose "Add Newgroup" option and type the name of the newsgroup. In order to make sure that you subsribe to the newsgroup, there is ne more step that has to be done. At the upper left section where you see the list of subscribed newgroups, you will see a green check mark as a heading. Underneath that column there is a period (.) for each displayed newgroup. Click at the "period" next to the name of the newsgroup you just add, that should change the dot to a green check mark, and you are done with the subscribe procedure. To display news articles in a newsgroup, just click on the name of the newsgroup, and click on the news article to read it. Furthermore, to post a news article or reply to one, just click on the corresponding icons under the Menu selection.

      Using Pine is an alternative way of subscribing, reading, and posting news in the newsgroups. As a news reader, Pine is a little bit hard to understand at the beginning, but once you get used to it, it should be as easy as using Netscape. To access news groups using Pine, user should be at the Pine environment by typing pine at the window. When you get to the main menu, type "L" to go to the Folder List and another screen will show up. Move the cursor or use the mouse to highlight [Select Here to See Expanded List] on the News-collection section. Hit enter on the screen will display the list of newsgroups that user can subscribe to. To subscribe to a newsgroup just type "A". Furthermore, "V" is the command to select the newsgroups that user already has subscribed to and view the news in it. The window that shows up will look similar to your e-mail window. To read a news message, simply just highlight the message that you want to read, and to reply to a news aricle, just press "R". Also, to post a news message, user has to type "O" to get to the other commands section, and just select "C" as a command to execute compose in order to post a new article.

      nn is another newsreader that does the same things that xrn does, only in different ways. nn is not an X-client, meaning that it doesn't use XWindows. Rather, it is a screen-based newsreader that will run off of any terminal with the proper screen support. Since nn is textual based, it is quite a bit more complicated to operate. Here we will just provide you with the basics to get you started with nn.

      To start nn, simply type nn at the Unix prompt. nn is like xrn in that the very first time you run nn, all the newsgroups that are available will be automatically subscribed. Note here that all newsreaders look for the .newsrc file in your home directory. The existence of this file determines whether or not all groups will be automatically subscribed to you or not. Once this file is created, any subsequent entry into any newsreader will use the .newsrc file to determine what newsgroups to which you are subscribed.

      In any event, if this is your first time running any kind of newsreader, and you run nn, do the following to subscribe and unsubscribe to the groups that you want. Start nn by typing nn at the prompt. This will create the .newsrc file for you automatically. Now, immediately quit out of nn by typing "Q". Now, edit the .newsrc file with your favorite editor. Notice that all of the groups have a colon after the name of the group. If a group has a colon after it, then it is subscribed; if it has an exclamation mark after it, then it is unsubscribed. So, replace the colon with an exclamation mark in all of the groups that you don't wish to subscribe to.

      Reading news in nn is not difficult. Start nn by typing nn. You may be asked whether or not you want to enter a particular newsgroup. Just hit the y key if you want to see news in the group nn is asking about. After that, the selection menu will appear. You will see a list of articles that will have a letter or number on the left side, which is the article ID, followed by the author, number of lines in the article, and the subject line. To select the articles that you wish to read, just type the letter or number of the article that you wish to see. Notice that the whole line should become highlighted. You may type as many or a few numbers or letters that you want. When you have done this, hit the space bar. You might at this point be presented with another list of articles. This happens if there were too many articles to view of the first page. Simply repeat the process above to select more articles to read. On the last menu page, after you hit the spacebar, you will start viewing the articles, starting with the first article that you have selected. Pressing the space bar after each page will either allow you to view the rest of the current article that you are reading, or will move you to the next article that you have selected for reading. Simply do the above for all of the different newsgroups that you have subscribed to. Type Q to quit.

      To post a new article to a newsgroup, type :post while selecting or reading articles. You will then be prompted for the name of the newsgroup that you wish to post to. You might type ? at this point to get a list of all of the groups that you may post to. You will also be prompted for such things as a subject, keywords, and summary. Keyword and summary information is optional. After the summary query, you will then be asked for the distribution of this article. You will now enter your default editor (most likely vi), and you may now type your new article. Simply quit the standard way when you are done. After saving, you will have a list of options to choose from. The options are self-explanatory, and just hitting return at this point will post your article to the newsgroup. To follow-up to an article is also easy. From the article page, hit the F key, or when reading an article, press the f key. In both instances you will be asked some questions that are self-explanatory. You will then enter the default editor (most likely vi), and you may type your follow-up. After quitting the editor, you will be presented with options similar to the posting options described above. Just hit return to choose the default option of posting the follow-up. You may also send mail to an author of an article, or send the actual article which you are reading to someone in a similar manner. To send mail to the author of an article, hit the R key on the article menu or the r key while reading an article. To send an article to someone else, hit the M key while on the article menu or the m key while reading the article.

      Xrn is the X-based newsreader. This is probably the simplest of the newsreaders that are supported in the EWS labs. Since this newsreader is X-based, it can only be run from the console of machines that are already running X. Everything done under xrn is done through the use of the mouse (unless you are typing a note or a response) and scroll bars on the windows. You start xrn by simply typing xrn at the Unix prompt. If you do not have a .newsrc file in your home directory, xrn creates one for you, and automatically subscribes you to all of the groups that are available. This is probably not what you want. The following are steps that you can use to subscribe and unsubscribe to the groups of your choice. Follow these instructions if you want to change the groups that you are subscribed or unsubscribed to.

      Read this section only if you are running xrn for the first time. See the next section for subscribing and unsubscribing after you have already run xrn at least once. When you start up xrn, you will be presented with a window. The top portion of the window contains all of the groups that you may subscribe to. Beneath this list will be several "buttons" that control subscription and unsubscription. These buttons are Quit, Add first, Add last, Add after group and Add unsubscribed. To subscribe to a given group, you must first highlight the group in the upper window by placing the cursor over the newsgroup that you wish to subscribe to and hitting either the left or middle mouse button. You may also use the right mouse button to select more than one group at a time. All of the buttons operate on any number of selected groups. At this point, the newsgroup will become highlighted to show your current selection. At this point, you may hit any of the add buttons, with each button having a different effect. The Add first button subscribes the highlighted newsgroup(s), and puts them at the beginning of your .newsrc file-meaning that the selected newsgroups will be the first one(s) that you can read when first starting a newsreader. Likewise, Add last will add the selected groups to the end of the .newsrc file so that they will be the last newsgroups that you read. If you choose Add after group, then you may type in the name of a newsgroup after which to add the group(s) that you have highlighted. The Add unsubscribed button is really not useful in this situation.

      After you have added all of the groups that you wish, hit the quit button, and you will enter a new menu. This is the point where you may now read news, subscribe and unsubscribe to other groups, and quit xrn.

      If you have already run xrn, and want to subscribe and unsubscribe to some newsgroups, the process is very easy. You have several options: You may hit the subscribe button, and type in the name of the group that you wish to subscribe to.You may hit the unsubscribe button, and type in the name of the group to unsubscribe to, or you may hit the All groups button. When you hit this button, you will be presented with a list, in the bottom window, of all of the groups that you may read. The processes of subscribing and unsubscribing to groups here is very similar to subscribing and unsubscribing when you first run xrn. You may select a single newsgroup, or a group of newsgroups, and use the appropriate buttons to add the selected group(s) the way you wish.

      Note that at anytime your cursor is over a button on the xrn screen, a small description of the action of the button is displayed in the small window above the buttons. Most buttons are self explanatory, and so only the buttons you need to know are discussed here.

      After you have subscribed to the groups that you wish to read, you should now hit the read button. Xrn will then go and fetch all of the unread articles in next newsgroup that is being read. After this is done, you will see a list of article titles in the upper window, and the actual article body in the lower window. The article body that is being displayed is the body of the article that the cursor in the upper window is pointing to (which, when you first enter a newsgroup, is the first article in the article list). Notice that there are quite a few buttons in between the two windows. We will discuss here the most important of those buttons. Some of the buttons pertain to the article list, and some pertain to the article body.

      When choosing articles to read, you will be concerned with the buttons Next unread and Next. The Next unread button will take you to the next unread article in the newsgroup. Notice that all read articles are marked with a + in the far left column in the article list. So, you may move from one unread article to the next by hitting the Next unread button. The Next button moves you to the either the next group that is after the group indicated by the cursor in the article list, or any article that you select with your cursor. For example, you might wish to go back to read an article, or group of articles that you have already read. You use your mouse to highlight the article that you wish to reread. You may now hit the Next button, and you will find yourself looking at the article even though it was not the next unread article. The Next button always takes you to the next group in the list, regardless of whether it is read or not.

      Many articles span more lines than are visible in the lower window. You may use some of the buttons in the menu bar to control what you see. The buttons Scroll forward, Scroll backward, Scroll line forward, Scroll line backward, Scroll to end, and Scroll to beginning are the buttons that control the actual article body. The two buttons Scroll forward and Scroll backward scroll the message body forward and backward one page, respectively. All other buttons of this type should be self-explanatory.

      Posting is very easy with xrn. You simply hit the Post button in the middle menu. You will then be presented with an edit screen on which to type your note. You should get a new screen on your window which will be your edit screen. Be sure to wait a few seconds before typing until you get the header (and possibly other information, see below) on the screen. In other words, xrn automatically builds the right headers for you, and sticks them at the beginning of the file. You don't need to worry about any of these except for Subject: (see below). When you are done typing your post, be sure that you enter a subject for your article after the Subject: line in the header that is displayed. Note, however, that if you post an article, you will not see it after you send it to the news-server because xrn (and other newsreaders) pre-fetch the article titles and their bodies. You should see your note when you leave the newsgroup that you are reading, and then come back to it at a later time.

      Posting a response to an article works in the same way as posting article. To post a followup (or response) to an article that you are reading, push the Followup button located on the bottom menu bar. You are put into the edit screen (see the section on editor commands), and have the same options as before.

      This time however, note that if you are posting a response, the article to which you are responding to is "included" in your post. This is so that you may refer to parts of the original article during your followup. However, please try and limit the parts of the "included" files to only those lines that are relevant to the conversation. It becomes very annoying for many people to wade through 40 or 50 lines of an article which they have already read, that is also "included" in your followup, especially if you only post a one- or two-line response to an article. Just use common sense when responding to articles.

      There are several buttons that you should know about that concern moving between newsgroups. These buttons are Fed up and Next group. The button Fed up will mark all of the articles in the current newsgroup as read, and then move you on to the next newsgroup in your subscription list. This is useful when you have read all of the articles in the current newsgroup that you want to, and do not want to see anymore of them when you re-enter this particular newsgroup. The Next group button will move you to the next newsgroup in your subscription list marking as read only those articles which you indeed read. Thus, next time you enter that newsgroup, any unread articles which were there before will appear again. Remember that news operates on the basis of whether or not an article was read or not. Once you read an article, you will not see that article again because you have read it (the exception being that once you have read an article, you may mark it as unread, and you will see it next time you enter the newsgroup). So be very careful when moving between newsgroups that any article that you may want to read again has been marked as unread (by using the Mark unread button), or you may never see it again.

      This section of the manual is intended to give a brief overview of xrn and its functions. It is by no means a comprehensive look at what xrn can do. If you would like to learn more about xrn and all of its functions, please refer to the xrn man page. The xrn man page, although very lengthy, is very informative and well-written. It covers all of the aspects of xrn. It also includes on ways to customize xrn to your liking.