3.4  USING rn


Some folks prefer this older newsreader.  If you type 
 
     rn news.announce.newusers
 
at your host system's command line, you'll see something like this:
 
    ********  21 unread articles in news.announce.newusers--read now? [ynq]
 
If you hit your Y key, the first article will appear on your screen.  If 
you want to see what articles are available first, though, hit your 
computer's = key and you'll get something like this:
 
     152 Introduction to news.announce    
     153 A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community   
     154 What is Usenet?
     155 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions               
     156 Hints on writing style for Usenet                   
     158 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part I           
     159 Alternative Newsgroup Hierarchies, Part II               
     160 Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette      
     161 USENET Software: History and Sources                
     162 A Guide to Social Newsgroups and Mailing Lists           
     163 How to Get Information about Networks                    
     164 How to Create a New Newsgroup                       
     165 List of Active Newsgroups                           
     166 List of Moderators                                       
     169 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part I                
     170 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part II               
     171 Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists, Part III              
     172 How to become a USENET site      
     173 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part I     
     174 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part II         
     175 List of Periodic Informational Postings, Part III
    End of article 158 (of 178)--what next? [npq]        
 
Notice how the messages are in numerical order this time, and don't tell 
you who sent them.  Article 154 looks interesting.  To read it, type in 
154 and hit enter.  You'll see something like this: 
 
   Article 154 (20 more) in news.announce.newusers (moderated):
   From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
   Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers
   Subject: What is Usenet?
   Date: 20 Sep 92 04:17:26 GMT
   Followup-To: news.newusers.questions    
   Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
   Lines: 353      
   Supersedes: 
 
   Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1                  
   Original from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)                            
   Last-change: 19 July 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
                                                                               
                                                                               
   The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
   misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
   phenomenon is evident, in spades.  In my opinion, more flame wars
   arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
   from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise, of
   necessity, among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly
   understood Usenet must be by those outside!
                                                                               
   --MORE--(7%)
 
This time, the header looks much more like the gobbledygook you get in e-
mail messages.  To keep reading, hit your space bar.  If you hit your n 
key (lower case), you'll go to the next message in the numerical order. 

To escape rn, just keep hitting your q key (in lower case), until you get 
back to the command line.  Now let's set up your reading list.  Because 
rn uses the same .newsrc file as nn, you can use one of the search-and-
replace methods described above.  Or you can do this:  Type 
 
     rn
 
and hit enter.  When the first newsgroup comes up on your screen, hit 
your u key (in lower case).  Hit it again, and again, and again.  Or just 
keep it pressed down (if your computer starts beeping, let up for a 
couple of seconds).  Eventually, you'll be told you're at the end of the 
newsgroups, and asked what you want to do next.  
     
Here's where you begin entering newsgroups.  Type 
 
    g newsgroup

for example, g comp.sys.mac.announce) and hit enter.  You'll be asked 
if you want to "subscribe." Hit your y key.  Now you'll be asked where 
to put the newsgroup.  If you want it up high in your reading list, type 
a number (1, for example, would put the list at the very top of your 
list); otherwise, hit a $ (yep). Then type
 
    g next newsgroup
 
(for example, g comp.announce.newusers) and hit enter.  Repeat until 
done.  This process will also set up your reading list for nn, if you 
prefer that newsreader. But how do you know which newsgroups to 
subscribe?  Typing a lowercase l and then hitting enter will show you a 
list of all available newsgroups.  Again, since there could be more than 
2,000 newsgroups on your system, this might not be something you want to 
do.  Fortunately, you can search for groups with particular words in 
their names, using the l command.  Typing 
 
     l mac
 
followed by enter, will bring up a list of newsgroups with those letters 
in them (and as in nn, you will also see groups dealing with emacs and 
the like, in addition to groups related to Macintosh computers). If you 
find what you want, but the list looks like it will keep going on for 
awhile, hit your q key until you get back to the normal rn prompts 
(normally, this will only be one or two q's).

because of the vast amount of messages transmitted over Usenet, 
most systems carry messages for only a few days or weeks.  So if there's 
a message you want to keep, you should either turn on your computer's 
screen capture or save it to a file which you can later download).  To 
save a message as a file in rn, type 
 
     s filename
 
where "filename" is what you want to call the file. Hit enter.  You'll be 
asked if you want to save it in "mailbox format."  In most cases, you 
can answer with an n (which will strip off the header).  The message 
will now be saved to a file in your News directory (which you can access 
by typing cd News and then hitting enter).  

Also, some newsgroups fill up particularly quickly -- go away for a 
couple of days and you'll come back to find hundreds of articles!  One 
way to deal with that is to mark them as "read" so that they no longer 
appear on your screen.  Within a newsgroup, type a lower-case c.  You'l 
be asked if you're sure you want to mark the current messages as "read." 
assuming you are, hit y.