POSTNEWS(1)              USER COMMANDS                POSTNEWS(1)



NAME
     postnews - submit news articles

SYNOPSIS
     postnews [ article ]

DESCRIPTION
     Postnews is a program that calls  inews(8)  to  submit  news
     articles   to   USENET.    The   commands  should  be  self-
     explanatory, however you may type ?  to most prompts to  get
     a  list  of the possible options (except for the Keywords of
     the article, etc).  It will prompt the user for the title of
     the  article  (which  should be a phrase suggesting the sub-
     ject, so that persons reading the news can tell if they  are
     interested  in  the article), for the newsgroup, and for the
     distribution.

     The distribution is typically a geographic  region  or  cor-
     porate  region.  Typing ?  will get you a list of the possi-
     ble distributions. You should use the  minimum  distribution
     that  will  serve  your purpose for posting the article. For
     example, if you are selling your car in New  Jersey,  it  is
     doubtful  that  someone  in  California (or Europe) would be
     willing to buy it. If you don't restrict the distribution to
     your local area, you will cause this article to be transmit-
     ted unnecessarily around the world.  Currently, with a  dis-
     tribution  of  world, the article will be seen in the United
     States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea and  other  places.   A
     distribution  header  will,  if  given,  be  included in the
     headers of the article, affecting where the article is  dis-
     tributed.

     After entering the title, newsgroup, and  distribution,  the
     user  will  be placed in an editor.  If EDITOR is set in the
     environment, that editor will be used.  Otherwise,  postnews
     defaults to vi(1).

     An initial set of headers containing the subject  and  news-
     groups  will  be  placed  in the editor, followed by a blank
     line.  The article should be appended to the  buffer,  after
     the  blank  line.   The  initial  headers can be changed, or
     additional headers added, while in the editor, if desired.

     After you have finished typing in your article, you have the
     option  of  sending it, listing it, quitting without sending
     it, editing the file again, or saving it in a  file  without
     sending it.

     For posting news from a program, see inews(8).

     If the file /usr/lib/news/recording is present, it is  taken
     as  a  list of recordings to be shown to users posting news.



Version B 2.11    Last change: October 22, 1986                 1

POSTNEWS(1)              USER COMMANDS                POSTNEWS(1)



     (This is named after the recording you hear  when  you  dial
     information  in  some  parts of the U.S., asking you to stop
     and think if you really want do do this,  but  not  actually
     preventing  you.)   The recording file contains lines of the
     form:

          newsgroup-specifier TAB filename

     for example:

          comp.all  comp.recording
          local.all,!local.test local.recording

     Any user posting an article to a newsgroup matching the pat-
     tern  on  the left will be shown the contents of the file on
     the right.  The file is found in the LIBDIR directory (often
     /usr/lib/news).   The  user is then told to hit DEL to abort
     or RETURN to proceed.  The intent of this feature is to help
     companies keep proprietary information from accidently leak-
     ing out.

FILES
     /usr/lib/news/active     List  of   known   newsgroups   and
                              highest  local  article  numbers in
                              each.
     /usr/lib/news/distributions
                              Suggested distribution code names
     /usr/lib/news/newsgroups Descriptons of newsgroups
SEE ALSO
     inews(8), readnews(1), vi(1), news(5), expire(8)

























Version B 2.11    Last change: October 22, 1986                 2