VNEWS(1) USER COMMANDS VNEWS(1)
NAME
vnews - read news articles
SYNOPSIS
vnews [ -a date ] [ -n newsgroups ] [ -t titles ] [ -rxuc ]
vnews -s
vnews -K
DESCRIPTION
Vnews is a program for reading USENET news. It is based on
readnews(1) but has a CRT oriented interface. The list of
available commands is quite similar, although since vnews is
a visual interface, most vnews commands do not have to be
terminated by a newline.
Vnews uses all but the last two lines of the screen to
display the current article. The next-to-last line is the
secondary prompt line, and is used to input string arguments
to commands. The last line contains several fields. The
first field is the prompt field. If vnews is at the end of
an article, the prompt is next?; otherwise the prompt is
more?. The second field is the newsgroup field, which
displays the current newsgroup, the number of the current
article, and the number of the last article in the news-
group. The third field contains the current time, and the
last field contains the word mail if you have mail. When you
receive new mail, the bell on the terminal is rung and the
word MAIL appears in capital letters for 30 seconds.
Vnews without any arguments prints unread articles.
The following flags determine the selection of articles.
-a [ date ]
Select articles posted after the given date (in
getdate(3) format).
-n newsgroups
Select articles belonging to newsgroups.
-t titles Select articles whose titles contain one of the
strings specified by titles.
-r Print the articles in reverse order.
-x Ignore .newsrc file. That is, select articles
that have already been read as well as new ones.
-u Update the .newsrc file every 5 minutes, as in the
case of an unreliable system. (Note that if the
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VNEWS(1) USER COMMANDS VNEWS(1)
.newsrc file is updated, the x command will not
restore it to its original contents.)
If the -c flag is specified, vnews will print the first page
of the article, instead of just the header.
You can use the -s flag to print the newsgroup subscription
list.
If you haven't read news in a while (or if you have never
read news!) you can do vnews -K to Kill (mark as read) all
of the articles in the groups to which you are subscribed.
Vnews maintains a .newsrc file in the your home directory
that specifies all news articles already read. It is
updated at the end of each reading session unless the -x
option was specified. If the environment variable NEWSRC is
present, it should be the path name of a file to be used in
place of .newsrc.
If you wish, an options line may be placed in your .newsrc
file. This line starts with the word options (left justi-
fied) followed by the list of standard options just as they
would be typed on the command line. Such a list may
include: the -n flag along with a newsgroup list and/or the
-r or -t flag. Continuation lines begin with a space or tab
character.
ENVIRONMENT
Options can be specified in the NEWSOPTS environment parame-
ter. Where conflicts exist, options on the command line
take precedence, followed by the .newsrc options line, and
lastly the NEWSOPTS parameter.
When the user uses the direct reply command, the environment
parameter MAILER will be used to determine which mailer to
use. The default is usually /bin/mail.
If EDITOR is set, it will be used in place of the default
editor on your system to edit replies and follow-ups.
If NAME is set, it will be used as your full name when post-
ing news or submitting a follow-up. If it is not set, the
name will be taken from the file .name in your home direc-
tory. If this file is not present, the name will be taken
from /etc/passwd.
If NEWSARCHIVE is set, a copy of any articles you post or
follow-up to, will be saved in the specified file. If it is
the null string, they will be copied in author_copy in your
home directory.
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If NEWSBOX is set, the filename you specify when you save or
write a file will be prepended with NEWSBOX unless the
filename is an absolute pathname.
If NEWSRC is set, it will be used in place of the .newsrc
file in your home directory.
If ORGANIZATION is set, it will be used as the name of your
organization whenever you post an article. The default is
compiled in and is usually correct. Typically, you would
only use this if you were reading news at a site other than
normal. (Or if you are trying to be cute.)
COMMANDS
Each vnews command may be preceded by a count. Some com-
mands use the count; others ignore it. If count is omitted,
it defaults to one. Some commands prompt for an argument on
the second line from the bottom of the screen. Standard
UNIX erase and kill processing is done on this argument.
The argument is terminated by a return. An interrupt (DEL or
BREAK) gets you out of any partially entered command.
In the following table, ^B is used as a shorthand for
Control-B.
Command Meaning
CR A carriage return prints more of the current article,
or goes on to the next article if you are at the end of
the current article. A SPACE is equivalent to CR.
^B Go backwards count pages.
^F Go forward count pages.
^D Go forwards half a page.
^U Go backwards half a page.
^Z Go forwards count lines.
^E Go backwards count lines.
^L Redraw the screen. ^L may be typed at any time.
b Back up one article in the current group.
c Cancel the article. Only the author of the article or
the super user can do this.
e Erase. Forget that this article was read.
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f Submit a follow-up article. You will be placed in your
EDITOR to compose the text of the follow-up.
h Go back to the top of the article and display only the
header.
l Redisplay the article after you have sent a follow-up
or reply.
m Move on to the next item in a digest.
n No. Go on to the next article without printing current
one. . is equivalent to n. This is convenient if your
terminal has a keypad.
p Show the parent article (the article that the current
article is a follow-up to). This doesn't work if the
current article was posted by A-news or notesfiles. To
switch between the current and parent articles, use the
- command. Unfortunately, if you use several p commands
to trace the discussion back further, there is no com-
mand to return to the original level.
q Quit. The .newsrc file will be updated unless -x was
on the command line.
r Reply. Reply to article's author via mail. You are
placed in your EDITOR with a header specifying To, Sub-
ject, and References lines taken from the message. You
may change or add headers, as appropriate. Add the
text of the reply after the blank line, and then exit
the editor. The resulting message is mailed to the
author of the article.
R This is the same as r except the body of the article is
included in your mail message for you.
ESC-r
Reply directly. You are placed in your MAILER as if
you had run it specifying the author of the article as
the recipient of a letter.
s [file]
Save. The article is appended to the named file. The
default is Articles. If the first character of the
file name is |, the rest of the file name is taken as
the name of a program, which is executed with the text
of the article as standard input. If the first charac-
ter of the file name is /, it is taken as the full
pathname of a file. If NEWSBOX (in the environment) is
set to a full pathname, and the file contains no /, the
file is saved in NEWSBOX. Otherwise, it is saved
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VNEWS(1) USER COMMANDS VNEWS(1)
relative to HOME.
ug Unsubscribe to the current group. This is a two charac-
ter command to ensure that it is not typed accidentally
and to leave room for other types of unsubscribes (e.g.
unsubscribe to discussion).
v Print the current version of the news software.
w Write. Like save s, except that the headers are not
written out.
x Exit. Like quit except that .newsrc is not updated.
y Yes. Print the current article and go to the next.
[n]A Go to article number n in the current newsgroup.
D Decrypts a joke. It only handles rot 13 jokes. The D
command is a toggle; typing another D re-encrypts the
joke.
H Print a very verbose header, containing all known
information about the article.
K Kill (mark as read) the rest of the articles in the
current group. This is useful if you can't keep up with
the volume in the newsgroup, but don't want to unsub-
scribe.
N [newsgroup]
Go to the next newsgroup or named newsgroup.
[n]+ Skip n articles. The articles skipped are recorded as
``unread'' and will be offered to you again the next
time you read news.
- Go back to last article. This is a toggle; typing it
twice returns you to the original article.
< Prompt for an article ID or the rest of a message ID.
It will display the article if it exists.
# Report the name and size of the newsgroup.
? Print a short help message.
! Passes the rest of the command line to the shell. The
environment variable A is set to the name of the file
containing the current article. If the last character
of the command is a &, then the & is deleted and the
command is run in the background with stdin, stdout and
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VNEWS(1) USER COMMANDS VNEWS(1)
stderr redirected to /dev/null. If the command is
missing, the shell is invoked. Use the l command (or
essentially any other command) to turn on the display
after the program terminates.
EXAMPLES
vnews Read all unread articles using the visual inter-
face. The .newsrc file is updated at the end of
the session.
vnews -n all !mod -r
Read all unread articles except articles whose
newsgroups begin with mod. in reverse order. The
.newsrc file is updated at the end of the session.
vnews -n all -a last thursday
Print every unread article since last Thursday.
The .newsrc file is updated at the end of the ses-
sion.
vnews -K Discard all unread news. This is useful after
returning from a long trip.
FILES
/usr/spool/news/newsgroup/number News articles
/usr/lib/news/active Active newsgroups
/usr/lib/news/vnews.help Help file for visual
interface
~/.newsrc Options and list of
previously read
articles
SEE ALSO
checknews(1), inews(8), postnews(1), readnews(1), vnews(1),
getdate(3), news(5), newsrc(5), expire(8), recnews(8), send-
news(8), uurec(8)
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