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NOTE: If a user is causing a real problem, you can add him or her to your kill file, a configuration file for your news reader that contains a list of users or subjects. Anything that appears in your kill file is automatically not displayed when you read news. Most news readers support some version of a kill file. This is a fairly painless way to cut down the noise from really annoying users.
In general, a little common sense and courtesy go a long way to avoiding any problems on Usenet. However, remember that Usenet is a huge place. There are simply too many people for you to try to make everyone happy. Eventually, someone will get angry over one of your posts, and you’ll probably be flamed.
Many different types of news-reading software are available—far too many to describe in this chapter. The rn news reader is a very common news-reading program that can be found on almost every UNIX variant. It was developed by Larry Wall and is widely available. Although rn isn’t the easiest news reader to use, nor does it have some of the fanciest features, it’s still one of the most popular news readers in existence. rn allows you to read news via an ASCII interface that’s suitable for local work on a terminal or from a remote network session.
NOTE: Another news reader, trn, is quite popular and is distributed with many distributions of Linux. The trn news reader is almost identical to rn except for the threading support. For compatibility with a wide variety of UNIX systems, only the rn news reader is discussed in this chapter. For more information on the threading capabilities of trn, refer to its Linux man page.
When you start rn for the first time, you see a message welcoming you to the program, followed by a list of newsgroups. You have the opportunity to subscribe to different groups at this point. If your site carries a large number of groups, it can be quite time-consuming to set up your initial subscription information. rn saves your subscription information in your home directory in a file named .newsrc.
After you complete your subscriptions, rn places you in a newsgroup selection mode. The name of each of your subscribed newsgroups is displayed one at a time. You can enter the newsgroup and start reading articles by pressing <y>, skip to the next group by pressing <n>, or go to the previous newsgroup by pressing <q>. You can also get a list of subjects in the newsgroup by pressing <=> at the newsgroup prompt. Most of the commands in rn and trn are one-character commands, and help is available at every command prompt by pressing <h>.
After you select a newsgroup to read, you enter article-selection mode. In this mode, several commands can help you navigate the articles in the newsgroup. Table 34.4 lists some of the commands available in article-selection mode.
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
| <n><Spacebar> | Scans forward for the next unread article. The Spacebar does this only at the end of the article, at the article-selection prompt. |
| <Spacebar> | Shows the next page of the current article if not at the article-selection prompt. |
| <Shift-n> | Goes to the next article. |
| <Ctrl-Shift-n> | Goes to the next article with the same subject as the current article. |
| <p> | Scans backward for the previous unread article; stays at current article if none is found. |
| <Shift-p> | Goes to the previous article. |
| <Ctrl-Shift-r> | Goes to the last previous article with the subject that’s the same as the current article. |
| <h> | Displays help for article selection mode. |
| <r> | Replies to the article author via e-mail. |
| <Shift-r> | Replies to the article author via e-mail, including the current article. |
| <f> | Posts a follow-up article. |
| <Shift-f> | Posts a follow-up article, including the original article in the new article. |
| <s>filename | Saves the current article to a file named filename. |
| <q> | Quits the current group and returns to newsgroup selection mode. |
These are only some of the options available within rn and trn. These are feature-rich programs that allow lots of user customization. Refer to the man pages and the online help for more information.
In this chapter, you explored the structure of Usenet, the basics of reading and posting articles, the hierarchy of newsgroups, and Usenet’s general culture. With a little patience, you’ll find Usenet news to be an indispensable source of information. You can find more information about electronic communication and the Internet in the following chapters:
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