From: Jonathan Duddington
Subject: Newsgroups
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 16:50:00
Source: Docs


Newsgroup Management
====================

Before fetching or loading any news articles into Pluto, or doing
any Newsgroup management, you should select your news fetcher from
Pluto's  Preferences->News->Transports menu.  This causes Pluto to
read your list of subscribed newsgroups from your news fetcher.

You should add and remove Newsgroups using the Lists->Newsgroups option
from Pluto's icon bar menu.  You should not add and remove them in ANT, Voyager, Termite etc.  Pluto will automatically update that data when you add or remove them in Pluto.

(However, if you do add a Newsgroup in ANT for example, you can re-select
the transport from Pluto's Preferences->News->Transports  menu. This
makes Pluto read the active newsgroup list to bring it back into step.)


Choose "Lists->Newsgroups" from the icon bar menu.

This allows you to add new Newsgroups, remove them, or temporarily
unsubscribe and re-subscribe.  These actions change the active
newsgroups file inside your news fetcher. 

When you add or edit a Newsgroup, you will get the Newsgroup Edit
dialogue.

You can specify an Expiry period in days which will take effect if the
Box in which news articles are stored has its "Use N/G expiry period"
option set.

Box: specifies the Box into which newly arrived articles are placed.

Default User:  Messages which you send to the Newsgroup will use this as
their From address.

Signature: specifies a signature file from the !Pluto.Choices.Signatures
directory which will be used as a default when replying to an article
from this newsgroup.  If you choose the "(user's sig)" option then the
normal signature for the replying User will be used.

News server:  This is only applicable if you use the NewsHound news
fetcher.  It specifies which news server should be used to fetch messages
from this Newsgroup.


Sources
=======

For general use of Pluto, you do not normally need to manage
Sources.  They are set up automatically when you add NewsGroups,
Mailing Lists, and User Names.

Each article can be given one, and only one, Source identity.

For News articles, this may be  a newsgroup.  For other types of article,
it could be something else such as a Mailing List address or one of your
User addresses. 

The Sources are listed by clicking the Lists->Sources option in the icon
bar menu. You can add additional Sources to this list.


Setting Newsgroups as Sources
=============================

Before you load News articles, you need to set up the Newsgroups
which are referred to in those articles, into the Sources list.

This is done automatically.  When you select from the Transport menu
in the News->Preferences dialogue, all the newsgroups to which you
are currently subscribed are added to the Sources list if they are
not already present.


Recognising the Source for a News Article
=========================================

When a News article is loaded, it's Source is set to be the first
newsgroup whose name is recognised from the Newsgroups: line in its
internet header.  If the article is cross-posted, it is still given
only this one Source, and it only appears once, in this one
newsgroup, in any Article List window.

The Source field in the Article Viewer window will indicate
additional crossposting newsgroups by adding "+ N" after the Source
name, where N is the number of additional groups.  To see what those
newsgroups are, you can click on the Show Internet Header toggle
(the up/down arrow icon) in the Article Viewer window.

If none of the Newsgroups in the article's internet header are
recognised, then its Source field is left empty, and the name of the
first Newsgroup is put into its Comment field.  You can therefore
look at the comment fields of articles which have no Source, and see
which Newsgroups need to be added to the Sources list.


Unrecognised Newsgroups
=======================

The Source is stored with each article as a single number.  So it's
important not to delete Newsgroups or other Sources from the Sources
list if there are still articles which use them.  An attempt to
delete such a Source will give a message indicating how many
articles are using it, and an option to re-assign those articles to
a different source before deleting it.

If an article has a source number which no longer corresponds to an
entry in the Sources list, that will be displayed as a question mark
followed by the source number.  This indicates that somehow the
source name has been deleted while still being used by articles.

 
