Next: Reading Messages, Previous: Setting Up Netnews, Up: The Hemlock Netnews Interface [Contents][Index]
Once your Netnews Group File is set up, you may begin reading netnews.
This command is the main entry point for reading bulletin boards in Hemlock. Without an argument, the system looks for what bulletin boards to read in the value of Netnews Group File and reads each of them in succession. Hemlock keeps a pointer to the last message you read in each of these groups in your Netnews Database File. Bulletin boards may be added to your Netnews Group File manually or by using the Netnews Browse facility. With an argument, Hemlock prompts the user for the name of a bulletin board and reads it.
This command prompts for a group and reads it, ignoring the information in your Netnews Database File.
When you read a group, Hemlock creates a buffer that contains important header information for the messages in that group. There are four fields in each header, one each for the date, lines, from, and subject. The date field shows when the message was sent, the lines field displays how long the message is in lines, the from field shows who sent the message, and the subject field displays the subject of this message. If a field for a message is not available, NA will appear instead. You may alter the length of each of these fields by modifying the following Hemlock variables:
How many spaces should be inserted before the date in News-Headers buffers.
These variables control how long the date, line, from, and subject fields should be in News-Headers buffers.
How many spaces should be left between the Netnews date, from, lines, and subject fields after padding to the required length.
For increased speed, Hemlock only inserts headers for a subset of the messages in each group. If you have never read a certain group, and the value of Netnews New Group Style is :from-end (the default), Hemlock inserts some number of the last messages in the group, determined by the value of Netnews Batch Count. If the value of Netnews New Group Style is :from-start, Hemlock will insert the first batch of messages in the group. If you have read a group before, Hemlock will insert the batch of messages following the highest numbered message that you had read previously.
If the number of new messages in a group exceeds the value of this variable and Netnews New Group Style is :from-end, Hemlock asks if you would like to start reading this group from the end.
You may at any time go beyond the messages that are visible using the Netnews Next Line, Netnews Previous Line, Netnews Headers Scroll Window Up, and Netnews Headers Scroll Down commands in News-Headers mode, or the Netnews Next Article and Netnews Previous Article commands in News-Message mode.
This variable determines whether Netnews will fetch all headers immediately upon entering a new group.
This variable determines how many headers the Netnews facility will fetch at a time.
This variable determines what happens when you read a group that you have never read before. When it is :from-start, the Netnews command will read from the beginning of a new group forward. When it is :from-end, the default, Netnews will read the group from the end backward.
Next: Reading Messages, Previous: Setting Up Netnews, Up: The Hemlock Netnews Interface [Contents][Index]