Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!helios.ee.lbl.gov!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!lll-winken!uunet!pyrdc!pyrnj!rutgers!soleil!eam
From: eam@soleil.UUCP (Ed A. Mills)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: basic questions
Keywords: articles, newsgroups, foolish questions
Message-ID: <758@soleil.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jul 89 01:44:25 GMT
Organization: Harris Semiconductor, Somerville, NJ
Lines: 78

My usual method of learning new software is to fool aruond with it until
I figure it out.  Well, this isn't working with "vnews", so maybe some of
you experts could give me a few pointers.  Please respond to each question
briefly and seperately.

1.  what is uunet?  how about usenet?  is vnews a subset of these things,
    or do they exist just for vnews?

2.  Exactly what is the function of "K"?  Does it have the same effect
    if I am reading an article at the end of a group as it would at
    the beginning?  What happens if new articles are added to a group
    after I "K" the group?  Do I still get to see them?

3.  Is there a newsgroup for instructions?  man vnews is the usual cryptic
    unix drivel.

4.  What is the difference between 'l' and 'L'?  These usually seem to have
    the same effect, which is usually about 10,000,000 articles when I only
    want to see a certain one.

5.  How do I unsubscribe to a group?  Can I later resubscribe?  How can I
    see what groups I am unsubscribed to?  For that matter, how can I see
    what groups I'm subscribed to without paging through all of them?

6.  What does the .newsrc file in my directory do?  What do the numbers
    mean after the newsgroups?  What do the !'s mean?  If I edit this
    file, does it change how vnews starts up?

7.  When new newsgroups are added to the network, are they automatically
    included in my groups, or do I have to add them somehow?

8.  Is there a way to order the groups as I please?  Maybe by rearranging
    the .newsrc file mentioned above?

9.  Can I go the the first group in a hierarchy?  For instance, say I want
    to see all of the comp groups?  Can I go the the first group in
    level n of the hierarchy?

10. What's the beef with hierarchies?  For example, in
    vegtables.green.good-tasting.nutritious.beans are there certain
    terms for each of the levels?  Would this be newsgroup vegtables,
    subgroup green, and so on... or what?  Is there a way to get a list 
    of a hierarchy under each level (kind of like cd vegtables.green;ls)?

11. Are there other newsgroups that have to be added or accessed specially
    by request?  Are there other nets with entirely new groups?  If so,
    how can I find out what they are and how to access them?  

12. How can I extract an article to a file?  I seem to have done this
    accidently a few times,  but it would be useful to know how to do
    it on purpose.

13. How can I reverse order articles so I see the new ones first? 

14. What are moderated groups?  Who modertates them?   Are postings
    postponed until the moderator decides to include them, or are
    they included but later deleted if he(she) decides he(she) doesn't
    like them?

15. If I postnews to a non-existent group, will it be created?

16. Can I 'unpost' an article that I posted?  I tried this once, but it
    said I didn't own it, even though I had just posted it.

17. Where and what is the host system for vnews?  If distributed, does
    each system with access serve part of the groups?

18.  I noticed that sometimes when I select a group with no articles, I
     am immediately kicked out of vnews.  This used to happen frequently 
     when I accessed comp.lang.apl, but now it seems to go to the next
     group instead. Was this a recently fixed bug maybe?  

Sorry about the volume of questions, but I guess this is the perfect group
for them.  

Ed Mills
Harris Semiconductor
Melbourne, Fl