After the configuration of &knode; we will now try to get your first news; to achieve this, you need to do some more steps of configuration, but you will not have to do this very often. If you want to read a newsgroup you first have to subscribe to it. &RMB;-click with your mouse on the entry of your newsserver in the folder-list; from the context menu that appears select the Subscribe to Newsgroups entry. &knode;, at this moment, does not know which newsgroups are available from this server and will ask you if it should fetch a list of available newsgroups: confirm with Yes. Now you should see the following dialogue. The Subscribe to Newsgroups Dialogue The Subscribe to Newsgroups dialogue The Subscribe to Newsgroups dialogue After some time &knode; will has fetched the list of available newsgroups and will show them in the left window, Groups on, in a tree; this tree view shows the newsgroup hierarchy. You can find a short description about the structure of the usenet and the hierarchy of the single newsgroups at http://www.kirchwitz.de/~amk/dni/usenet-einfuehrung (German). The simplest method to navigate in the tree is to use the Search input field: &knode; will filter the groups displayed according to your input. If you are searching for a group about &kde;, but you do not know its exact position in the hierarchy, just type kde in the Search field. When you enter the k, you will already see the list changing; the second letter, d, give you a significantly-reduced list of shown groups; and the final e reduces the list to the groups with kde in their name. You will most likely end with just one group: comp.windows.x.kde If your server carries the international groups, you might find your list is: comp.windows.x.kde de.comp.os.unix.apps.kde This incremental search gives you the possibility to search for newsgroups without knowing their exact paths. On a closer look, you will see &knode; showing the groups without a tree if there are only a few groups left; this is not a bug, it is a feature. Normally &knode; shows all the groups in a tree; if this option is activated, all newsgroups are listed amongst one another. If subscribed only is checked the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups you are already subscribed to; this is very convenient if you want to unsubscribe from some groups: you then won't have to search the whole tree for these groups. If new only is checked the tree-view Groups on shows only the groups which are new since you last fetched the group list; for this to be functional, you first have to fetch a new group list with New List. The New Groups button give the possibility to show all the new groups since a specific date. This list shows all newsgroups on this server; if you check one of the checkboxes, subscribed only or new only, you get the corresponding selection. The Current changes window shows all changes you have made since you opened the dialogue. The subscribe to list shows the newsgroups you have chosen to subscribe to. Below you can see the unsubscribe from list, which shows all newsgroups from which you have chosen to unsubscribe. You cannot unsubscribe from groups you are not subscribed to. This button opens a dialogue which allows you to configure the list of new groups; you can choose between showing all groups since the last refresh or all groups since a given date. With the date option, &knode; provides a more-flexible possibility to check for new groups; you can even check for new groups since before the last refresh of the group list. The New List button tells &knode; to fetch a new group list from the news server. The newsgroup hierarchy is in a constant flux; all the time there are groups introduced, renamed or moved; some groups just disappear: they are no longer available and get deleted. To reflect this, &knode; gives you the possibility to refresh the the group list. This is, normally, only needed to see if your server now provides a group which was not there before. If you simply want to make sure you have seen every new group, it is more effective to use New Groups; fetching the complete list is much more time consuming, but you do make sure that any deleted groups vanish from the grouplist. Unfortunately there is no guarantee that your newsserver is providing all available newsgroups: many newsserver refuse groups publishing binary attachments; other groups are only available from special servers. &knode; provides you the possibility to use more than one news-server if you want to access alternative servers providing these groups; you can read more about this in . We now want to subscribe to the &kde; group: mark the the box beside the name; you can now see the group in the list labelled subscribe to. Another possibility is to use the arrows between the two windows. If you picked the wrong newsgroup by mistake you can undo your selection by unchecking the checkbox next to the group's name in the Groups on window; again, you could use the arrow (you probably noticed the arrow changing direction.) If you want to unsubscribe from a newsgroup it is as easy as subscribing to it: you just uncheck the box next to its name. The groups you wish to unsubscribe from are shown in the unsubscribe from list. Again, the arrow is another way of doing things: to correct your actions you can use the arrow again; this works as long as the dialogue is not closed by clicking OK. As a &kde; and &knode; user you will probably want to subscribe to the group, so make sure you checked the box and press OK. This group now appears in the tree view under the server entry it was chosen from; in our example this is My News Account. If you can not see the group, click on the cross next to the server entry or on the server entry itself; the list of subscribed newsgroups should appear. Click on the newsgroup; now you see on the right in the article view an empty folder: &knode; has to fetch the articles for the new newsgroup. If you have, in SettingsConfigure KNodeReading newsGeneral, the check box Check for new article automatically checked &knode; tries to fetch the articles from the server when the newsgroup is first selected; if this is unchecked, you have to use AccountGet new articles. When you are using leafnode as a server, there will be a single article in the group: leafnode generates an article in every new subscribed group; this indicates that leafnode will consider this group the next time it fetches articles. You can ignore an error message saying the article can not be found. If you select this article you tell leafnode you are really interested in this group. You get the real articles when your local newsserver fetches them from the Internet and provides them to you; details about this can be found in the documentation of your local newsserver. When everything works the articles of the subscribed newsgroup appear in the upper right window — the article view. &knode; always shows three views: the folder view, the article view and the article window; you can change height and width of these views with the mouse. If you click in a window it gets the focus; this is important if you want to use &knode; with the keyboard. The Tab key changes the focus between the views; the currently-active view is indicated by a small colored bar over the column headers. This picture shows &knode; with the subscribed &kde; newsgroup. The three views of &knode; The three views of &knode; The three views of &knode; It is possible to select more than one group or article. You can select an area by clicking on the first entry with the &LMB;, holding the &Shift; key and clicking on the last entry with the &LMB; again. If you want to select more than one single entry, but they are not next to each other in the list, you have to select the first by clicking on it with the &LMB; and then select the other entries by holding down the &Ctrl; key and clicking on them with the &LMB;. In either case you can clear your selection by clicking on another entry with the &LMB;. If you have selected more than one entry you have to activate the context menu with the &Shift; key pressed, otherwise you'll clear the selection. The folder views contains not only the accounts you configured — in our example this is My News Account — but also three other folders. When you are subscribed to some newsgroups there will be plus next to the name of the account: clicking on the plus or the name of the account opens the tree to show the names of the newsgroups you have chosen to subscribe to using that account. Using the &RMB; you can get a context menu for the selected item (folders or newsgroups): if you select a newsgroup and choose Properties you can, amongst other things, specify your identity for this particular group; you can find more about this in the Local Identities chapter. When you select a newsgroup with your mouse a list of articles of this group appears in the upper-right window; if there are no articles in the upper-right window there are two possibilities — either there are no articles for this newsgroup on the newsserver or the newsserver did not fetch them yet. Select AccountGet new articles in all groups: if there are still no articles appearing you either have some problems with your settings or there really are no articles for this group. Try another group: if there are no articles for this group you will probably have to work through the first chapters, about the configuration of &knode;, again; the Frequently Asked Questions chapter may help you, too. If you are using a local newsserver the articles only appear if the newsserver has already got them from the internet; if you are using leafnode this is done by the fetchnews program. The newsgroup folders appear with the name they are given by the hierarchy on the newsserver; in our example this is comp.windows.x.kde. You can change the name shown in this view: in the context menu (click with the &RMB; on the newsgroup's name) choose Rename group, then you can change the name in the input field. A good name for comp.windows.x.kde would be, for example, The KDE Newsgroup. If you don't change this, the hierarchical name will still be shown. Besides the name of newsgroups the folder view shows more information by altering its appearance: if a newsgroup contains new articles its name is shown bold; the columns Total and Unread also tell you how many articles are in the corresponding group or folder and how many are marked as unread. The Outbox folder contains all articles which are to be sent later, or which could not be sent because of an error. If you want to sent an article later choose FileSend Later in the editor: the article is then filed in the Outbox folder; it is possible to edit, delete or send these articles later. If an article was not sent because of an error, it is stored in this folder; you will not lose these articles. This folder is used for storing drafts of your articles; for example, if you want to do some further work on them but you have no time for it right now. To store an article in this folder choose FileSave as Draft in the editor. You can edit, delete and send the articles in this folder. This folder contains copies of the articles that you have successfully sent, including your e-mail replies; you can delete the messages in this folder, but it will not un-send the messages already sent. If your are using a local newsserver an article appearing in the folder Sent only indicates the local newsserver received the article; it is possible this article will never appears in any newsgroup if the local newsserver was not able to send it for some reason. If you notice some articles not appearing in the according newsgroup first make sure it was sent by the local newsserver. If you are using leafnode then articles leafnode was unable to send are normally found in /var/spool/failed.postings. The article view gives you a list of all articles in the selected newsgroup or folder; you can change the appearance of this view using the View menu. The uppermost row of the view contains the column headers. Subject The Subject column shows the subjects of an articles which, most of the time, give you a clue about the content of this article. The subject is chosen by the article author. You can find more about this in How to post and reply to news. From The From column shows the author, or their e-mail address if the author didn't give a name. You can configure your settings in SettingsConfigure KNodeIdentity; when you publish an article &knode; will show these settings in the From column. Score The Score column shows the scoring of an article as a number; the default is 0. Articles which are important to you can be scored up; articles you want to ignore can be scored down: the range is -100000 to +100000. You can read more about this in the Scoring, Watching and Ignoring chapter. The Score column is only shown if SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsGeneralShow article score is activated. Date The Date column shows the date and time when the article was written. Lines The Lines column shows the number of lines of the article; this column is only shown if SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsGeneralShow line count is activated. This is a short explanation of the different symbols for labelling articles. Already-read articles are labelled with this symbol. Articles labelled with this symbol are read and the body was fetched from the server. Articles labelled with this symbol are unread and the body has not yet been fetched. Articles labeled with this symbol are unread but the body has already been already fetched. Articles labelled with this symbol are part of a thread with new and/or unread articles in it. Articles labelled with this symbol are parts of a guarded thread. This corresponds to a score of 100. Besides different symbols, &knode; is using the following highlighting: Bold article subjects. The article is new in this group; it was fetched during the last connection with the server. Article subjects printed in grey. There are no unread follow-up articles. You can navigate in articles, display an article and open or close threads with your mouse or keyboard. When you select an article with your mouse its entry in the the article view gets colored; at the same time the header and body of this article appear in in the article window. If you want to read another article you can use the mouse to select it, or you can use the cursor keys. If you use the cursor keys you can move the dashed frame to the article you want to read and then press Enter to mark and display the article. There are many key commands to provide comfortable navigation within a news group and to switching between newsgroups. Here the most common key commands of the standard key configuration are listed; you can configure the key bindings in SettingsConfigure Shortcuts. Toggle Subthreads T The replies to an article are either shown or hidden by multiply pressing this key; another way to open threads is to use the Right Arrow key. Filter F6 A dialogue is shown where you can choose the filter for the articles. Sort F7 A dialogue is shown where you can change the sorting of the articles; if you choose a column for a second time it will change the sorting direction. Browsing articles Space This key gives you a convenient possibility for browsing through the article view: by pressing this key the article in the article window is scrolled; when you reach the end of the article by repeatedly pressing Space, it takes you to the next article; when you have read all articles in one newsgroup, Space takes you to the first article of the next newsgroup. By repeatedly pressing Space you can browse through all subscribed newsgroups like this. Next unread article &Alt;Space This key binding jumps to the next unread article. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view; threads are opened if necessary. Next unread thread &Ctrl;Space This command jumps to the next thread containing unread articles: the first unread article is then selected and shown. The sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Next article N This command jumps to the next article; the sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored. Previous article B This command jumps to the previous article in the group; the sequence follows the order of articles in the article view. Replies in closed threads are ignored. Next group + This command jumps to the next newsgroup; the sequence follows the order of newsgroups in the folder view. Previous group - This command jumps to the previous newsgroup; the sequence follows the order of newsgroups in the folder view. Some newsgroups are very crowded and contain lots of articles; perhaps only some of them are interesting to you. One possibility to keep track of the news you are interested in is to sort your articles with a certain criterion. Sorting your articles, and choosing sorting criteria, is done with the column titles in the article view: clicking on a column title makes it the current sorting criterion; another click on the same column title changes the order of sorting. The current sorting criterion is indicated with an arrow next to the title; this gives you an easy sign which column is used for sorting, too. You have to make the column wide enough, though, so you can actually see the arrow; you can change the column width by moving the mouse pointer on the small area between two column titles: the pointer changes its appearance to two horizontal arrows; clicking and holding the &LMB; mouse button now allows you to change the width of the column to the left of the mouse pointer. &knode; gives you the possibility to reduce the flood of articles: you can show only articles fitting specific criteria; &knode; uses filters for this task. In the following paragraphs we are just dealing with the predefined filters; for defining and using your own filters please refer to the Defining and using Filters chapter. Normally you will read most articles only once, and then never again. &knode; labels the articles which are unread, but when there are more articles in a news group than can be shown by the article view you often have to search for unread articles: it would be much easier to see only the new fetched and unread articles; &knode; gives you this feature by the predefined filters. In the status line at the bottom border of your main window next to the word Filter the actually-active filter is shown: if you do not change the filter configuration this is the filter all; this means all articles of a newsgroup are shown. all is one of the predefined filters; there are eight of them in all, which are described in more detail here. All This filter is the default setting; it shows all articles in a newsgroup. You can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterAll Unread This filter shows only unread articles; you can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterUnread New This filter shows only articles fetched during the last connection; you can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterNew Watched This shows only threads chosen as watched threads by you; you may be watching a thread because, for example, you are participating in it, or because you are particularly interested in the answers. You can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterWatched This filter only shows something if have you selected one or more threads to watch; you can achieve this by selecting ArticleThreadWatch: next to the subject a symbol will appear, showing a pair of eyes. Threads With Unread This filter shows only threads containing unread articles; you can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilter Threads With Unread Threads With New This filter shows only threads with newly-fetched articles; you can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterThreads With New Own articles This filter only articles you have published; you can choose this filter by selecting ViewFilterOwn Articles Threads With Own Articles This filter only shows threads containing articles you have published; you can choose this filter by selecting View FilterOwn Articles For everyday use the unread filter is propably the most useful: it shows all unread articles, including the old ones. The other filters are very task-specific and are seldom used; in the end it is a matter of taste which filter to select. The article window shows the currently-selected article. You can scroll in it like in a normal text editor window; the difference is that you cannot change the article — it is for reading only. By pressing the &RMB; in the article viewer you can access the important functions in the context menu very quickly. The window itself is divided in three areas; they are explained in more detail now. This part shows the header lines or a part of the header. You will recognize some information here from the article view; for example, the subject and the address or name where the article originated. When you click on the From: address, &knode; opens an editor window where the email address of the author and the subject of the referring article are already filled in for you; this enables you to reply to the author directly from their article. The appearance and content of the header shown by default can be configured by choosing SettingsConfiguring KNode...Reading NewsHeaders; you can find a more-detailed view on this in Configuring the Shown Headers. By selecting ViewShow all headers you force &knode; to show the whole header as is produced by the newsreader and newsservers; normally you do not need this view: it needs a lot of space in the article window. The last lines of the header contain, if necessary, some references to other articles, shown as numbers in the range from 1 to n. These References are the articles to which the current article refers: the article labeled with 1 is the oldest article to which this article refers; the article with the highest number is the most-recent article to which the current article refers. When you click on a reference the corresponding article is loaded and shown in the article view; if the article is no longer available you will be informed by &knode;. This will happen if the article has been deleted by the article management of &knode; due to its age, or your news server decided to delete it from the newsgroup; for details on how to get such an article, please refer to the Frequently Asked Questions. The first lines in an article, with the subject and author information and so on, are called headers. The body of the article follows straight after the header; it is the actual message the author published in the newsgroup. Be aware that some articles may contain quotes from other articles which are not recognisable as quotes; this depends on the news editor the author used and their article-formatting habits. &knode; provides some formatting which can be used by articles; at the moment the available options are: /italic/ *bold* _underlined_ Do not use the highlighting too often; the impact decreases the more it is used. The main part of the message (the contents) is called the body. Most of the time a quote is indicated by a prefixed > on every line; however, there are other possible signs. If you can not directly recognize a quote the author did not obey the rules of proper quoting. Also, it is usual to start an answer with a introductionary line, something like: On 12/25/2000 Santa Claus wrote: Normally you do not have to concern yourself with these introductionary lines: &knode; does this automatically when you reply to an article; to find out how to customize this line see The Composer Settings documentation. In SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsAppearance you can choose how the articles are shown. In particular, &knode; provides the smart coloring of different reply levels; you can read more about this in the chapter Configuring the appearance. &knode; only supports the colouring of quotes if the quoting lines starts with special characters; you can configure these characters at SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsViewer. When the body of an article contains links to internet addresses you can invoke an internet browser to display the web page it links to by clicking on the link; details about configuring this feature can be found in General news settings. Below the main text of an article you can find the signature of the author, provided you did not disable signatures in SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsGeneral. The signature is divided from the text by thin horizontal line. If an article contains attachments they are shown below the signature in a table. The multipart MIME format allows the body of an article to be sent in more than one format; for example, in plain-text and in HTML. It depends on the newsreader which format is used for reading the article. &knode; allows the different formats to be shown by selecting SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsViewerShow alternative contents as attachments; when this option is checked all alternative formats are shown as attachments and can be opened and viewed. If this option is unchecked you will not be shown the different text formats and &knode; decides which one should be shown. Before you start writing articles or replying to other Usenet users be sure you understand the habits of the current newsgroup; again, reading A Journey Through Usenet would be a good idea. For testing the settings of &knode; please resist sending an article to a random newsgroup; it is not very friendly to bother people with test articles: what if you are subscribed to a newsgroup and half of its articles only contain the word test? It is like somebody calling you just to testing their phone. This is the reason for the special groups having test in their name; for example, alt.test. In these groups you can test everything you want without bothering anybody; some groups even send you error messages back. Here you can easily identify obvious mistakes, like a missing or a wrong e-mail address or a wrongly-configured charset which doesn't show all special characters. You can find a selection of test groups in Test Groups. Subscribe to one of the test groups now; some news servers have their own test groups, which are probably less crowded. Remember, you have to download the articles of the new subscribed group; this may take some time if there are many articles in the group. The only important articles are yours and the answers by the check handler; if you want to reduce the number of articles fetched during the test you can configure this in SettingsConfigure KNode...Reading NewsGeneralMaximal number of articles to fetch: if you reduce this dramatically, you should not wait too long to fetch the new articles after sending your test article; however, if it set too low your article might not be fetched. A tolerably-fast news server should provide your article right after you sent it; you might, however, have to wait a while, at worst 1 or 2 days. Feel free to send another article if cannot see your initial one; this is what the test groups are for. When you are using a local news server the configuration of Maximal number of articles to fetch in &knode; is probably unnecessary; you should consult the documentation of your news server instead. If you did not encounter any errors unsubscribe from the test groups and set Maximum number of articles to fetch back to normal (1000). You have seen most of &knode; now, but have only used it passively so far, so let's publish a test article now. Select the new subscribed test group in the folder view; then, with ArticlePost to newsgroup...or the key P, the Editor will be opened. You can use the &knode; Editor like a normal Texteditor; there are some additional features for writing news articles though. In the editor window there are two input lines: one for the subject, which is empty at the moment; and another for the newsgroups this article is going to be posted to. Enter the text This is a test in the subject field. Normally, when you post an article, use a descriptive subject. Articles without a descriptive subject are often ignored. Avoid subjects like Help, it doesn't work !!!!! This subject gives no information about the content of your article. The Groups: field already contains the test newsgroup you selected before; do not change this. Below the input field for the newsgroup there is another inactive option field: this function is explained later in the chapter The editor; for now it is irrelevant. For simplicity reasons we will only use a simple sentence; type: This is the body of my test article. @ $ % Then, enter an empty line, followed by: Did it work? This may look funny to you, but it does what it is supposed to do — test your configuration.. Your article should now look like the screenshot below: Your first article Your first article Your first article If you are using &knode; with a local newsserver choose FileSend Now in the Editor; if you do not have a connection to a newsserver at this point, you may want to send the article later — you can achieve this by using FileSend Later — &knode; then stores this article in the folder Outbox. You can start sending the articles in the Outbox manually by selecting FileSend pending messages. After sending the article you will notice &knode; stores a copy in the Sent folder. Depending on how fast your article is published in the according newsgroup you can check the result after some time: mostly it is sufficient to check for new messages immediately after sending the article; be patient, though, it may take the article some hours before reaching the newsgroup. If the article does not arrive after a number of hours it is likely that something went wrong: try again; then, if it is still not working, have a look at the Frequently Asked Questions. Even when you are using a local news server, you have to check for new articles: the local news server just sends the article, it does not store it in the local newsgroup, so you have to synchronize with an external news server if you want to see if your test article has arrived. If the article appears in the newsgroup you are successful; now you should check if there is the correct sender and if the article is readable. Have a look on your language-specific characters like the German umlauts; if they are not readable you have to change the coding at SettingsConfigure KNode...Posting NewsTechnicalto Allow 8-bit. Change this and repeat your test. If everything is right you have successfully published your first article in usenet with &knode;. After successfully publishing an article we will now answer to your own article. You want to answer the question you asked, don't you? Select your article in the article view and press the &RMB;: a context menu will appear; choose Followup to newsgroup. &knode; opens the Editor again, but this time there is already a subject filled in for you. The subject line reads: Re: This is a test Re: is a shortcut for the Latin In re, which translates to something along the lines of relating to. You should not change the subject and, above all, the Re:: most newsreaders sort threads by the subject. If you want to change the subject for some reason put the new subject in front of the old and replace the Re: with a bracketed (Was: ... ); in our example this would look like A new subject! (Was: This is a test) With this kind of subject you show the other readers there is a branch in the original discussion; this happens, for example, when a new topic occurs in the original discussion or the original subject has changed for some reason. If you answer to an article with such a subject, delete the bracketed part of the subject; the first part with a prefixed Re: remains. Re: A new subject! Let us have look at the Editor now. The contents of the article to which we want to reply has already been copied to the Editor by &knode;; to indicate the text is a quote every line is prefixed with a >. In front of the quoted text &knode; has put an introduction line: the content of this line refers to the original author; you can change the standard text of this line in SettingsConfigure KNode...Posting NewsComposerIntroduction Phrase:. The original article contains the question: Did it work? We want to answer this question now. Place the cursor below the quoted question and write in the next line: Yes it worked, congratulations! We are not finished yet: it is considered polite to begin with a greeting like Hello in the first line; whether you call the author by their name or not depends on your habits, watch the newsgroup to get used to the habits there. Next we delete all non-mandatory parts of the quoted article; in our case, we delete all parts except the question. With such a short text this is unnecessary, but this just an example: if you have to read a message 100 lines long again just to find an I agree at the end you will understand.... Aside from this, it makes articles smaller so they use less space on the server. At the end we say good bye. This screenshot shows our answer before sending it. Your answer to your article Your answer to your article Your answer to your article You can find a good guide for correct quoting at http://www.afaik.de/usenet/faq/zitieren (German). Now we still need to post our reply; like posting the original message choose FileSend now or the alternative FileSend later, if you're not online at the moment and you're not using a local newsserver. If everything works you will see your article in the newsgroup after a while; easy, isn't it? Using the Options menu you can configure whether you want to send an email, a news article or both. The Mail Reply follows the same lines as posting a reply in a newsgroup; the only difference is that a mail reply is sent directly to the author and does not appear in any newsgroup. Sometimes it is better to use an emailed reply instead of posting a reply to newsgroup; they are used primarily for when you want to correct an error or misconduct by the author, without hurting their feelings by doing so publicly on the newsgroup. To answer with an e-mail select your article; again, open the context menu with the right mouse button; and choose Reply by Email: &knode; opens the Composer with the quoted article. Subject and body are identical as when posting an article but the Groups: field is replaced by a To: field; here the author's email address appears. In our example this should be your own email address, if &knode; is set up correctly. For emails the same rules for quoting and politeness apply as for posting an article in a newsgroup. After finishing your Reply, you can send it. The screenshot below shows the reply we distributed by email. A Mail Reply A Mail Reply A Mail Reply The Mail Reply only works if you have used the correct settings in SettingsConfigure KNode...AccountsMail. Depending on the configuration of your computer, you will find the reply in your mailbox; you might have to connect to your ISP and fetch your new mail first though. On the Options menu you can configure whether you want to send an email, a news article or both.