Usenet News

About Usenet News

Everyone who has an account has access to more than 8,000 news groups that are available through Usenet News. The following tutorials refer to a news group named udel.general, a news group that facilitates discussion around University of Delaware issues. The Internet Tools: Usenet section of this guide should be reviewed before attempting these tutorials. You can also access Usenet News using your web browser. You should also be familiar with the style of these tutorials.

Accessing Usenet News

If you are familiar with the use of news groups, to access the University's news group, while in trn/rn:

  1. Type: g udel.general [RET]
If you have never accessed Usenet news groups before, you should do the following procedure ONCE.

  1. After logging in to brahms, chopin, strauss or copland, at the % prompt, type: ~consult/newsmenu [RET].
  2. Press: [RET] again
  3. Press: 2 [RET]
  4. Press: y [RET]
  5. Press: 5 [RET] to exit. You will be asked if you want to keep changes as made? Type y [RET]
  6. Type: trn [RET]
You will be unsubscribed to all news groups that you will not need initially, simplifying your access procedure. Once you are familiar with the system, you can then subscribe to any news group that you wish.

How to Read Unread Articles on udel.general

  1. At the % prompt, type: trn [RET]
  2. You will be asked if you want to subscribe to any new news groups, type N [RET] ([SHIFT] plus the n key). You can resubscribe to them if you wish at a later date. The computer will scroll through all the new news groups that have been created since you last accessed trn. If you haven't accessed trn for a long period, you may consider repeating the steps in the previous section.
  3. You have two options for reading unread news from your subscribed news group(s). Option 1 sends you directly to the news group you wish to read and lets you read all the unread articles. Option 2 allows you to read the unread articles that you select, assuming that you do not wish to read all articles.

Option 1

After typing N [RET] to all new news groups, you will be prompted to read unread articles in a subscribed news group ending "...read now? [+ynp]" type: g udel.general [RET].

You will be prompted with the number of unread articles in the news group. If there are no unread articles you may quit by typing the letter q, returning you to the % prompt.

If there are unread articles press the [SPACE BAR], you will see a menu that lists the unread articles. Make sure you press the [SPACE BAR] key and not the [RET] key, this is a common mistake. Press the [SPACE BAR] again to read the first unread article in the news group. Press the [SPACE BAR] until all the articles are read. When finished you will be prompted "End of news group udel.general" with information on the next news group with unread articles, if any. Type: q to quit, you will be returned to the % prompt. If you do not wish to read all the unread articles, you may quit at any time by typing q twice.

Option 2

After typing N [RET] to all new news groups, type: g udel.general [RET]. Press the [SPACE BAR] to view the article selection menu. To select a particular article, you press the letter that appears in the same row (on the left hand side) to the article you wish to select, you will see a + sign appear next to the letter after you select it. Press: [SPACE BAR] to move through the article selection menu until the article you selected appears (it will be the next thing that appears on your screen if there is only one page for the article selection menu). You can select a number of articles at one time as you browse the article selection menu, or, after selecting an article, you can press [RET] to read that article before moving on to the remainder of the selection menu. When you have finished type: q twice, you will be returned to the % prompt.

Save Articles From Your News Group for Future Reference

Once you have read an article on the news group it will not be displayed again. If you think that an article should be kept for future reference, then you need to save it. The simplest method is to mail it to your own Email address and save it there.

  1. At the end of the article you wish to save (you can actually do this while in the middle of reading the article if you wish), type: | mail "your user ID" [RET] Note that the "|" symbol used above is not the letter ell "l' or the numeral one "1", but the vertical bar character that appears on only computer keyboards. This symbol is often the shift key of the backslash character "\".

When you next access your Email, you will see this article in your in-basket.

How to Read Old Articles

You have many options available if you wish to read/find an old article on the news group, here we shall look at two. Option 1 brings up all old articles in the news group, you can then browse through to find the relevant one. Option 2 uses a keyword search. Before you go through option two, you need to be familiar with an article that was posted to your news group, but has been read, and therefore does not appear in the article selection menu anymore.

Option 1

  1. When you are in the article selection menu, the menu that gives you the articles to read, the title and author, press: U ([SHIFT] u). This will bring back all the previous articles in the news group.
  2. Press: < ([SHIFT] , ) to move to the first article selection menu (you may have to do this more than once or not at all if you are already on the first page of the article selection menu).
  3. Press the letter that appears in the row of the article you are looking for, as you did in a previous section.
  4. Press: [SPACE BAR] to move to the next menu, repeat this until the article appears.
  5. At the end of the article, press: | mail "your user ID" [RET] You did this in a previous sections.

Option 2

You can read old articles by using a keyword search.

  1. At the article selection menu, type: /"KEYWORD"/r:m:+ [RET]
    This will create a search of all read articles with the keyword in the subject header. Replace KEYWORD with a word that appeared in the subject header of the article you are looking for. If the article(s) you searched for does not appear in the article selection menu, press: < ([Shift] ,) to move to the previous page of articles, keep doing this until the article appears in the selection menu. You will see a + by all the articles that your search discovered. If there are no articles, then you may consider using a different keyword!!

How to Subscribe/Unsubscribe to Other News Groups

If you wish to subscribe to additional news groups you must know the name of the news group you wish to subscribe to.

  1. To generate a list of the names of news groups that cover a topic, at the news group selection level, type: l (for list) "topic name" [RET] (one space between l and topic name). If this search does not bring up a news group, don't despair, use a different keyword for your search, don't forget, there are more than 8,000 news groups!
  2. You will be given a list of all news groups that cover that topic. To subscribe to a news group, type: g "news group name" [RET]
    You will be asked if you want to subscribe to the news group, type: y, press: [RET]. You will now be subscribed to the news group.
  3. To unsubscribe to a news group, type: g "news group name" [RET]. You will be prompted with the status of unread news articles, type: u. You are now unsubscribed to that news group. To return to the % prompt, type: q.

Printing From the News Group

To print an article from the news group you have several options, use the one that you find easiest.

Option 1

  1. At the end of the article you wish to print (or while you are reading it), type: | qpr -q smips [RET] The article will be printed by Smith Hall's laser printer.

Option 2

  1. At the end of the article you wish to print (or while you are reading it), type: | kpr [RET]
    The article will be printed by your local printer attached to your computer. (This will not work in the B&E lab.)

Option 3

  1. Mail the article to your Email address, as you did in the previous section, and print it as you would normally print your Email messages.

Option 4

  1. While reading the article, press the print screen button on your computer, if you are in the B&E lab, make sure the printer is "pointing" to your computer.

Post an Article to Your News Group

You can post an article to your news group using two methods. You can reply to an article on the news group or you can create your own article and post it.

Option 1 Posting a follow-up article (Replying to an article)

  1. If you want to reply to a note on the news group, when reading the note type: f (if you type F ([Shift] f), you will include the original article in your reply).
  2. You will be asked if you are starting an unrelated topic, type: n [RET]
  3. You will be asked if you are absolutely sure you want to do this, type: y [RET]
  4. You will be asked prepared to include [none], type: [RET]
  5. You will be prompted for a text editor. Type: pico [RET]
  6. Use the [DOWN ARROW] key to get to the text area of the message (below the Cc: field). Leave an extra line after the Cc: field. This is very important. You will now be able to type your response.
  7. When finished type ^x ([Ctrl] x).
  8. You will then be asked if you wish to save the file, type: y.
  9. Pico will then prompt you with a file name. Do not change the file name, just type: [RET]
  10. You will be asked if you want to send the message, type: s [RET]
If you want to reply to a note, but only to the sender, not the news group, press: r instead of f while reading the message, follow the same procedure as above, beginning with step 4.

Option 2 Creating an article

It is advised that you create your text file before accessing the software to post to the news group. You can do this using the text editor pico.

  1. At the % prompt type: pico "filename" [RET]
    This will send you to the pico text editor where you can create your document.
  2. After creating the document type: ^x ([Ctrl] x). You will be asked if you wish to save your work, type: y. You will be prompted with the name of the file, press: [RET] (to keep the same filename) or, if you want to change the filename, type: "filename" [RET].
  3. You will be returned to the % prompt, type: Pnews [RET]
  4. You will be prompted "news group(s):" type: udel.general [RET] (or the name(s) of the news group(s) that you wish to post the note to).
  5. You will be prompted "distribution :", type: udel [RET]
  6. You will be prompted "Title/Subject:", type: "title" [RET].
  7. You will be prompted "... to do this? [ny]", type: y [RET]
  8. You will be prompted "prepared file to include [none]:", type: "filename" [RET], the filename of the file you created in the pico text editor. Press s [RET] to send the file. You will be returned the % prompt.

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The University of Delaware
August, 1996