Usenet/Net News

Usenet is a news system available on many UCI machines. These newsgroups provide a place for people to discuss various interesting topics, some of which actually pertain to computers.

The areas of interest in Usenet are separated by category into hierarchies. These hierarchies allow users to figure out what a particular group's topic is. Here are some important hierarchies:

comp
some aspect of computers
rec
some aspect of recreation, hobbies, etc.
sci
science and non-computer technology
talk
debate forums
soc
socializing and social issues
misc
anything else
uci
some aspect of UCI
So, for example, comp.unix.misc is a group to discuss the Unix operating system and rec.food.cooking is a place to discuss cooking techniques, recipes, and food in general. There are several hundred groups to choose from. The uci.ucinet group contains important information about UCInet.

There are a couple of different programs available to read news, but we will only discuss one, "rn", since it's the most commonly used news reader.

When you use "rn" for the first time, you will have to wait a moment while it initializes certain files. One file it creates is called '.newsrc' (normally in your home directory). This file contains a list of all newsgroups along with information about subscription status and which articles you've read (note: the order of the groups in this file determines the order in which you read groups). "Rn" also creates a directory called 'News' in your home directory. This is where it stores articles you save and other important control information (e.g., 'KILL' files).

After "rn" sets up your files, you will be in the newsgroup prompt level of "rn". You will be presented with a partial list of newsgroups and the number of articles left to read in each. The first group should be named `general'. This group contains documents that describe Usenet and informal protocols for behavior within the Usenet community. After the group `general', you will cycle through the list of all available newsgroups. You will probably not want to read them all now (or ever). There are two commands "rn" has for dealing with this situation. If you never want to read a group again, then type [u] to unsubscribe to that group. If you plan on reading this group again, but do not want to read through the backlog of articles, you can type [c]. This command will mark all articles as read, but offer the group to you again the next time you use "rn". You will then only have to read new articles in the future. Most likely, you will probably end up reading 10-20 groups on a regular basis, so the [u] and [c] commands are very useful when reading news for the first time. The easiest thing to do is to copy a friend's '.newsrc' and then add and delete newsgroups as you see fit.

There are 3 different command levels (or modes) in "rn":

You can go through an entire news reading session by just pressing the space bar repeatedly. This allows you to read every article on every newsgroup. If you wish to be more selective in your reading, here is some useful information:

Newsgroup Selection Mode

When you first start "rn" you are in the newsgroup selection mode which allows you to select the newsgroups you wish to read. The first thing you will see is an abbreviated list of the groups to which you are currently subscribed and the number of unread articles in each of those groups. You will then be asked if you wish to read the first group on the list. Here are some possibilities:
y, [space], [return]
yes, read this group now
n
no, read it later
q
quit rn
u
unsubscribe to group
c
catch up - mark all unread articles as read
h
help
g name
subscribe (goto) newsgroup name
=
list subjects of unread articles

Article Selection Mode

After you have selected a newsgroup to read, you will be in article selection mode which, not surprisingly, allows you to select articles to read.

Here are your options:

n, [space]
show next unread article
[CTRL-N]
enter subject search mode: go to next article with same subject
k
mark as read all the articles with the same subject
p
show previous unread article
-
show the article you just read
m
mark current article as unread
f
submit a followup article to the network
F
submit a followup article to the network, including the text of the current article in your article
r, R
reply to author (not to newsgroup) through net mail. R includes text of article.
s name
save text of article in file name
c
catch up - mark all unread articles as read
[CTRL-B]
back up one page
u
unsubscribe to this newsgroup
h
help
q
quit this newsgroup
At the article selection level, "rn" selects (by default) unread articles in numerical order (the order in which the articles arrive at your site). This can make it hard to follow a discussion because every article is on a different subject and there is no continuity. The [CTRL-N] command is very useful as it allows to to follow one discussion thread before going on to a new subject. If you wish to have Subject Search mode be the default, start "rn" with the "-S" switch.

Pager Mode

When you start reading articles you will be in pager mode. You will see the text of the first article on the screen. If the whole message does not fit into one screenfull, you will see: 
--MORE--(n%)
at the bottom of the screen. This means you need to press [SPACE] to see one more screenful or [RETURN] to see one more line. At the end of the article, you will see: 
End of article nnnn--what next? [npq]
Most of the commands which work in article selection mode also work in this mode.

There are many more options and commands for "rn". Type "man rn" at the shell prompt for more information.

You can run "rn" in "threaded mode" by invoking it as "trn". See "man trn" for more information on that option.

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