3.2 NAVIGATING USENET WITH nn


How do you dive right in?  As mentioned, on some systems, it's all done 
through menus -- you just keep choosing from a list of choices until you 
get to the newsgroup you want and then hit the "read" command.  On Unix 
systems, however, you will have to use a "newsreader" program.  Two of 
the more common ones are known as rn (for "read news") and nn (for "no 
news" -- because it's supposed to be simpler to use). 

For beginners, nn may be the better choice because it works with menus -- 
you get a list of articles in a given newsgroup and then you choose which 
ones you want to see.  To try it out, connect to your host system and, at 
the command line, type 
 
     nn news.announce.newusers
 
and hit enter.  After a few seconds, you should see something like this: 
 
Newsgroup: news.announce.newusers                     Articles: 22 of 22/1 NEW 
                                                                               
a Gene Spafford   776  Answers to Frequently Asked Questions                   
b Gene Spafford   362  A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community       
c Gene Spafford   387  Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette     
d Gene Spafford   101  Hints on writing style for Usenet                       
e Gene Spafford    74  Introduction to news.announce                           
f Gene Spafford   367  USENET Software: History and Sources                    
g Gene Spafford   353  What is Usenet?                                         
h taylor          241  A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists          
i Gene Spafford   585  Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I               
j Gene Spafford   455  >Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II             
k David C Lawrenc 151  How to Create a New Newsgroup                           
l Gene Spafford   106  How to Get Information about Networks                   
m Gene Spafford   888  List of Active Newsgroups                               
n Gene Spafford   504  List of Moderators                                      
o Gene Spafford  1051  Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I               
p Gene Spafford  1123  Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II              
q Gene Spafford  1193  >Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III            
r Jonathan Kamens 644  How to become a USENET site                             
s Jonathan Kamen 1344  List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I         
                                                                               
-- 15:52 -- SELECT -- help:? -----Top 85%-----                                 
Explanatory postings for new users. (Moderated)                                
 
Obviously, this is a good newsgroup to begin your exploration of Usenet!  
Here's what all this means:  The first letter on each line is the letter 
you type to read that particular "article" (it makes sense that a 
"newsgroup" would have "articles").  Next comes the name of the person 
who wrote that article, followed by its length, in lines, and what the 
article is about. At the bottom, you see the local time at your access 
site, what you're doing right now (i.e., SELECTing articles), which key 
to hit for some help (the ? key) and how many of the articles in the 
newsgroup you can see on this screen. The "(moderated)" means the 
newsgroup has a "moderator" who is the only one who can directly post 
messages to it.  This is generally limited to groups such as this, which 
contain articles of basic information, or for digests, which are 
basically online magazines (more on them in a bit). 

Say you're particularly interested in what "Emily Postnews" has to say 
about proper etiquette on Usenet. Hit your c key (lower case!), and the 
line will light up.  If you want to read something else, hit the key that 
corresponds to it.  And if you want to see what's on the next page of 
articles, hit return or your space bar. 

But you're impatient to get going, and you want to read that article now.  
The command for that in nn is a capital Z.  Hit it and you'll see 
something like this: 
 
 
Gene Spafford: Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on NetiquetteSep 92 04:17 
Original-author: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)                           
Archive-name: emily-postnews/part1                                             
Last-change: 30 Nov 91 by brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)                  
                                                                               
                                                                               
  NOTE: this is intended to be satirical.  If you do not recognize             
  it as such, consult a doctor or professional comedian.  The                  
  recommendations in this article should recognized for what                   
  they are -- admonitions about what NOT to do.                                
                                                                               
                                                                               
                        "Dear Emily Postnews"                                  
                                                                               
        Emily Postnews, foremost authority on proper net behaviour,            
        gives her advice on how to act on the net.                             
                                                                               
============================================================================   
                                                                               
Dear Miss Postnews: How long should my signature be? -- verbose@noisy          
                                                                               
A: Dear Verbose: Please try and make your signature as long as you             
-- 09:57 --.announce.newusers-- LAST --help:?--Top 4%--                        
 
The first few lines are the message's header, similar to the header you 
get in e-mail messages.  Then comes the beginning of the message.  The 
last line tells you the time again, the newsgroup name (or part of it, 
anyway), the position in your message stack that this message occupies, 
how to get help, and how much of the message is on screen.  If you want 
to keep reading this message, just hit your space bar (not your enter 
key!) for the next screen and so on until done. When done, you'll be 
returned to the newsgroup menu.  For now hit Q (upper case this time), 
which quits you out of nn and returns you to your host system's command 
line. 

To get a look at another interesting newsgroup, type 
 
     nn comp.risks
 
and hit enter.  This newsgroup is another moderated group, this time a 
digest of all the funny and frightening ways computers and the people who 
run and use them can go wrong.  Again, you read articles by selecting 
their letters.  If you're in the middle of an article and decide you want 
to go onto the next one, hit your n key. 
     
Now it's time to look for some newsgroups that might be of particular 
interest to you.  Unix host systems that have nn use a program called 
nngrep (ever get the feeling Unix was not entirely written in English?) 
that lets you scan newsgroups.  Exit nn and at your host system's command 
line, type 
 
     nngrep word
 
where word is the subject you're interested in.  If you use a Macintosh 
computer, you might try
 
     nngrep mac
 
You'll get something that looks like this:
 
     alt.music.machines.of.loving.grace
     alt.religion.emacs
     comp.binaries.mac
     comp.emacs
     comp.lang.forth.mac
     comp.os.mach
     comp.sources.mac
     comp.sys.mac.announce
     comp.sys.mac.apps
     comp.sys.mac.comm
     comp.sys.mac.databases
     comp.sys.mac.digest
     comp.sys.mac.games
     comp.sys.mac.hardware
     comp.sys.mac.hypercard
     comp.sys.mac.misc
     comp.sys.mac.programmer
     comp.sys.mac.system
     comp.sys.mac.wanted
     gnu.emacs.announce
     gnu.emacs.bug
     gnu.emacs.gnews
     gnu.emacs.gnus
     gnu.emacs.help
     gnu.emacs.lisp.manual
     gnu.emacs.sources
     gnu.emacs.vm.bug
     gnu.emacs.vm.info
     gnu.emacs.vms
 
Note that some of these obviously have something to do with Macintoshes 
while some obviously do not; nngrep is not a perfect system.  If you want 
to get a list of ALL the newsgroups available on your host system, type 
 
     nngrep -a |more
 
or

     nngrep -a |pg
 
and hit enter (which one to use depends on the Unix used on your host 
system; if one doesn't do anything, try the other). You don't absolutely 
need the |more or |pg, but if you don't include it, the list will keep 
scrolling, rather than pausing every 24 lines.  If you are in nn, hitting 
a capital Y will bring up a similar list. 

Typing "nn newsgroup" for every newsgroup can get awfully tiring after 
awhile.  When you use nn, your host system looks in a file called 
.newsrc.  This is basically a list of every newsgroup on the host system 
along with notations on which groups and articles you have read (all 
maintained by the computer).  You can also use this file to create a 
"reading list" that brings up each newsgroup to which you want to 
"subscribe."  To try it out, type 
 
     nn
 
without any newsgroup name, and hit enter.  
     
Unfortunately, you will start out with a .newsrc file that has you 
"subscribed" to every single newsgroup on your host system!  To delete a 
newsgroup from your reading list, type a capital U while its menu is on 
the screen.  The computer will ask you if you're sure you want to 
"unsubscribe."  If you then hit a Y, you'll be unsubscribed and put in 
the next group. 

With many host systems carrying thousands of newsgroups, this will take 
you forever.  

Fortunately, there are a couple of easier ways to do this.  Both involve 
calling up your .newsrc file in a word or text processor.  In a .newsrc 
file, each newsgroup takes up one line, consisting of the group's name, 
an exclamation point or a colon and a range of numbers.  Newsgroups with 
a colon are ones to which you are subscribed; those followed by an 
exclamation point are "un-subscribed."  To start with a clean slate, 
then, you have to change all those colons to exclamation points. 

If you know how to use emacs or vi, call up the .newsrc file (you might 
want to make a copy of .newsrc first, just in case), and use the search-
and-replace function to make the change. 

If you're not comfortable with these text processor, you can download the 
.newsrc file, make the changes on your own computer and then upload the 
revised file.  Before you download the file, however, you should do a 
couple of things.  One is to type 
 
     cp .newsrc temprc
 
and hit enter.  You will actually download this temprc file (note the 
name does not start with a period -- some computers, such as those using 
MS-DOS, do not allow file names starting with periods).  After you 
download the file, open it in your favorite word processor and use its 
search-and-replace function to change the exclamation points to colons. 
Be careful not to change anything else!  Save the document in ASCII or 
text format.  Dial back into your host system.  At the command line, type 
 
     cp temprc temprc1
 
and hit enter.  This new file will serve as your backup .newsrc file 
just in case something goes wrong. Upload the temprc file from your 
computer.  This will overwrite the Unix system's old temprc file.  Now 
type 
 
     cp temprc .newsrc
 
and hit enter.  You now have a clean slate to start creating a reading 
list.

The first time you go into a newsgroup, there could be dozens, even 
hundreds of articles.  If you want to start from scratch, hit a capital 
J.  This will mark all the articles in that newsgroup as "read," so that 
the next time you enter the conference, you will only see messages posted 
since the last time you were there.