From: Jonathan Duddington
Subject: Articles
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 05:50:00
Source: docs


News items, Emails, and other documents are called Articles.

The Articles are stored in compressed form in the "articlesXX" files
in the "Articles" directory.

Each Article has an associated header, which contains the title,
date, author, source, length, and other information.  These headers
are kept with their articles in the "articlesXX" files.

The "Cards" file in the Articles directory contains a copy all
these headers.  It is loaded into main memory while the application
is running.  This acts as an index to allow fast display of article
lists, searching, sorting, etc.


Deleting Articles
=================

When an article is deleted, it is moved to the Bin box, where it is
kept until the application terminates.  Articles can be viewed in
the Bin box, as they can in any other box.  They can also be moved
back out of the Bin box if required.

When the application terminates, the article files with the
most amount of space due to binned articles are compressed,
finally deleting the binned articles.  So not all binned articles are
destroyed when the program terminates.

This scheme means that not all the free space due to binned articles is recovered at once, but it reduces the amount of time taken by free space recovery.

The "Statistics" option from the icon bar menu shows how much free
space has not yet been recovered.

If, while running Pluto, you have accessed any Boxes which have
password protection, then when you quit Pluto any articles in the Bin
box become unaccessible.  This prevents someone else reading your
private mail from the Bin. 


Repair
=======

The "Repair" option on the icon bar menu forces all the article
files to be compacted and deletes all the binned articles.
It also corrects any inconsistencies between the article files
and the "Cards" index file.

It can be used to force all the ArticlesXX files to be compacted.

 
Organising Articles
===================

A number of means are provided to allow you to organise articles.

1.  Articles are stored in "Boxes".  You can create additional boxes,
    and you can move articles between them.

    Boxes can be set up for incoming news and mail, outgoing news and
    mail, junk (as recognised by the killfile), etc.

    Each box may be given an expiry period, after which articles are
    automatically moved into another Box (eg. into the Bin box to delete
    them).  

2.  Each article has a status indicator, showing whether it has been
    read.  Additionally, individual articles can be set to LOCKED or
    MARKED status.

    LOCKED indicates that the article will not be automaticlly expired,
    and a warning will be given if you attempt to delete it.

    MARKED behaves similarly to LOCKED, but is shown by a different
    colour status indicator.  It can be used, for example, to indicate
    articles which need further attention, such as those to which you
    need to reply.


