Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ogccse!blake!wiml From: wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu (William Lewis) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: basic questions Summary: basic answers, I guess Keywords: articles, newsgroups, foolish questions Message-ID: <3025@blake.acs.washington.edu> Date: 31 Jul 89 04:44:17 GMT References: <758@soleil.UUCP> Reply-To: wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu (William Lewis) Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 94 In article <758@soleil.UUCP> eam@soleil.UUCP (Ed A. Mills) writes: >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. > >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? Do you mean 'k' or 'K'? They're different of course. 'k' simply scans every article that's currently been recieved, and if it has the same subject as the current subject, it 'j'unks it. (i.e., marks it as read). 'K', however, places a command in the KILL file for that newsgroup, to do the same thing for EVERY article ever recieved, so that you will NEVER see articles with that subject (unless you remove the command, of course.) KILL files can be found in subdirectories off your ~/News directory. Typing '^k' will edit the KILL file for the current newsgroup. Their format is fairly simple (//:). > >3. Is there a newsgroup for instructions? man vnews is the usual cryptic > unix drivel. This one, I suppose. >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? To unsubscribe, type 'u'. If you resubscribe (by typing "g ") it will still remember which articles you have read. >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? .newsrc contains information about the newsgroups you are subscribed to. It is rn's (and presumably vnews's) configuration file. The format of every line is: : where is the name of a newsgroup, and is a list of all the articles you have read in that newsgroup. Articles in can be either single numbers, delimited with commas, or ranges of numbers separated by a hyphen (i.e., 1-760 means 1 through 760.) If the colon is replaced by a '!', that means you are currently unsubscribed to that newsgroup. rn (or vnews) keeps the numbers of the articles you have read around, in case you resubscribe later. >7. When new newsgroups are added to the network, are they automatically > included in my groups, or do I have to add them somehow? With rn, I am prompted for every new newsgroup. I don't know about vnews but I would assume it works the same way. >8. Is there a way to order the groups as I please? Maybe by rearranging > the .newsrc file mentioned above? I seem to remember that rn's documentation implies that vnews forces the newsgroups into a certain order. With rn, rearranging .newsrc will have that effect, but apparently vnews will re-sort .newsrc if you do that. >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. Two ways. 's' saves the current article to a file named after the current newsgroup. 'w' does the same thing, but strips off the headers first. Appending a file-name to either command will make it save to that particular file. >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? In a moderated group, the moderator must post all messages. Usually you are not allowed to post to a moderated group, you must mail your article to the moderator. Some news software will automatically change a post into a mail for moderated groups. >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. Hmmm, 'C'ancel should unpost a message. Maybe the current article wasn't the one you thought it was. Or maybe vnews and rn are just different... --- phelliax "I'm not a news expert, but I play one on Usenet"