4.3  DOWNLOADING MESSAGES


Let's say there is an article in Usenet you want to save to your home 
computer.  There are a couple of ways to do this.  One would be to use 
your own telecommunication's logging or screen-capture function to 
capture the text as it scrolls down the screen.  This method is good if 
there's just one or two articles you want to save.  

But what if there are a whole lot of messages on a particular topic you 
want to download, or if you want to temporarily store them online before 
getting them? It might make sense to save them all to one file that you 
then download. 

To do this in nn, hit a capital S while in the article.  You'll get 
something like this:

     Save on (+~|) +alt/internet/services

If you hit enter a couple of times, the file will be saved. But note 
those backslashes.  That means you'll actually be creating a series of 
Unix sub-directories in addition to a file (in the example above, you'd 
be creating a directory path called alt/internet in which you'd save the 
file called services).  This can be a pain!  Instead, backspace as far as 
you can and type in whatever you want to call the file.  Now hit enter a 
couple of times, and the file will be saved in your home directory.  
Repeat for other articles until done.   Assuming you use the same file 
name each time, each message will be stored in that file.
          
Note for you MS-DOS folks: be sure to name the file something you're 
computer can handle, for example, manual.txt, rather than something it 
can't, such as computer.manual.txt). 

To do this in rn, hit a lower-case s while in the article.  You'll be 
given a default file name in which to save the article.  You can either 
use that or type in your own name. Hit enter, and you'll be asked if you 
want to save the article "in mailbox format."  Hitting y or n here makes 
little practical difference unless, for some reason, you later want to 
view the article from within elm or some other mail program.  The article 
will then be saved in a file in your News directory (which is a 
subdirectory off the normal directory you are put in when you connect to 
your public-access provider). To save another 
article to that file, repeat the process, and make sure you use the same 
file name.  The article will be appended to the end of the file you 
created.

Now to get the messages home. First, you tell your host system that you 
want to transfer, or download, the file. If your telecommunications 
program has Zmodem, that's all you'll have to do -- the downloading will 
then start automatically.  If you are using something like Xmodem, Ymodem 
or Kermit, however, you'll then have to tell your own computer to get 
ready to receive a file.  To start a Zmodem download in Unix, type 

     sz filename

where "filename" is the file you want and hit enter.  With Zmodem (and 
also batch-Ymodem), you can initiate several downloads at once by either 
typing in a series of filenames after 'sz' (for example: sz file1 file2) 
or by using Unix wildcards (which are very similar to MS-DOS wildcards; 
for example, sz man* would send you manual1, manual2 and manoman.txt).
If you use Ymodem, the command would be in the form

     sz -k filename

while if you want to use Xmodem, it would be

     sx filename

Note that in Xmodem, you have to issue an sx command for each file you 
want.

With Ymodem and Xmodem, you'll then have to tell your own computer's 
communications program that you're about to download a file and what you 
want to call it.

Now you rn users, recall how the files you created were being stored in 
your News directory.  That means that to get them, you'd have to type 
something like:

     sz News/filename

Otherwise, you'll get an error message.

4.4  ASCII AND YE SHALL RECEIVE


That was easy, wasn't it?  Alas, it can get more complicated.  Unix, MS-
DOS and Macintosh computers all handle the end of lines of text 
differently.  That means that when you download a text file (such as a 
collection of Usenet postings), it could look awfully odd on your 
computer, to the point of being almost unreadable.  There are a couple of 
ways to handle this.  One is to use an ASCII "flag" after sz (or sx or 
sz -k). If you're lucky, your public-access site and your own computer 
will be able to figure out that you need to have the line endings 
translated.  The command would look like this: 

     sz -a filename

or
     sz -ka filename

etc.

If you still get weird results, most Unix systems have a translator 
program that can put the proper line endings in.  Typing 

     unix2dos file.txt file.txt

would convert file.txt into a valid MS-DOS file.  A similar program 
called unix2mac works the same for Macintoshes.