VN(1-LOCAL) RISC/os Reference Manual VN(1-LOCAL)
NAME
vn - visual news reader
SYNOPSIS
vn
DESCRIPTION
Vn is a news reader which uses the same .newsrc file as
readnews (1), but displays and interacts differently. It is
aimed at allowing you to rapidly scan a large number of
newsgroups, looking for something you want to read. The
major premise is that you will be interested in a small
number of articles, but will be interested in keeping tabs
on a large number of newsgroups which may contain something
interesting from time to time. It also has the ability to
unpackage digests.
Vn supports the -n, -x and -t options of readnews (news-
group, read all articles, and title). In addition, there is
a -w (writer) option which works like -t, but is a search
string to apply to the "From" header line rather than the
subject. In the -n, -t and -w options, a leading ! on the
string is taken to mean negation. The rest of the string is
a regular expression for the -w and -t options.
For example:
-n net.dogs -w !fred -t [Bb]eagle
For articles in net.dogs about beagles written by somebody
other than fred. Multiple -w -t options result in the logi-
cal "or" of the -w's anded with the logical "or" of the
-t's, whatever order you may specify them in. -n options
allow the "all" convention, replacing ".all" by ".*" before
using the regular expression calls. -n options are pro-
cessed in order given, so that subsequent more specific -n's
may partially undo the effect of previous "alls".
Options may be given on the command line, in which case they
will supersede those given in the .newsrc file. For command
line -n options, the "!" unsubscriptions in .newsrc are also
ignored. This allows you to override all subscription
information by command line specification.
When vn is invoked, there will be a pause (with an explana-
tory "reading" message and a series of newsgroups) while vn
reads the news. The newsgroups listed are ones articles are
actually being found in. The length of the pause depends on
how much news there is. If there is a lot, it may take a
long time to get through the reading phase.
Once the reading phase is over, interaction is rapid. If vn
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is backgrounded, it suppresses the "reading" output, so that
it will not halt on tty output until it is ready to begin
showing articles.
Vn may show you a list of newsgroups which were not men-
tioned in the .newsrc file. Records for these newsgroups
will be added, whether they were scanned for articles or
not. The first time vn is used, the list may be quite long
and scroll off the screen. Thereafter, there should only be
a list when new newsgroups are created. This display serves
to let you know of their existence, or of something happen-
ing to your .newsrc file.
The basic display is a "page" which shows a newsgroup and a
list of titles, number of lines, and authors for new arti-
cles. Articles which have been updated in the .newsrc file
are flagged with an underscore preceding the article number.
You also have the ability to "mark" articles for the dura-
tion of a session, shown with an asterisk (col. 1 and 2 are
reserved for asterisk and underscore respectively - in nor-
mal usage they will be blank, so that the casual user will
probably be unaware of their use until marking and updating
are invoked)
There is a help menu to go with this page. You may read
articles, save them, send them to the printer, either by
cursor position, the whole page, or in specified sets. Sets
are specified either as a set of article numbers, a regular
expression to match the subject / author / number of lines
data on, or an asterisk to indicate the choice of a set of
previously marked articles. Any of these methods also
accept a leading "!" to indicate negation.
By default, when you read articles only a couple of the
dozen or so header lines are shown. There is an option to
allow you to see all the header lines when you read arti-
cles. The command controlling this toggles between the two
states.
A similar toggle is used to support ROT13.
Vn is capable of manipulating digests. The "d" command
unpacks a digest, and presents you with a page showing the
unpacked articles, which can be accessed as for articles on
normal newsgroup pages. When you leave the digest page(s),
you reenter the normal flow of newsgroups. Digests can also
be read as normal articles, of course.
Order of pages is determined by order of groups in .newsrc.
Newsgroups which are not mentioned in .newsrc will be added,
as mentioned previously, and tacked onto the end. Lines
corresponding to non-existent newsgroups will be deleted.
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You will probably want to run vn once, then edit .newsrc to
the desired order of presentation.
Updating the data for .newsrc is under user control. If you
do no "W", "w", "^w", o or O commands, no updating takes
place, and you'll see the articles again the next time you
read news. Breaks result in a "really quit?" query, so you
can recover from noisy lines and prompts for commands you
didn't really mean. If you quit without updating, you will
be prompted to make sure you don't want to do so.
Commands are single character (no return key required),
except that they may be preceded with numeric characters,
which may have some effect on their actions. Commands which
require further input cause prompts for the information,
this input being terminated by return. For prompted input,
the erase and kill keys work.
Command Menu For Page:
[...] = effect of optional number preceding command
pipes are specified by filenames beginning with |
articles specified as a list of numbers, title search string, or
* to specify marked articles. ! may be used to negate any
q - quit
k - move up [number of lines]
j - move down [number of lines]
<back sp> - previous page [number of pages]
<return> - next page [number of pages]
d - unpack digest
r - read article [number of articles]
<space> - read article (alternate 'r')
R - read all articles on page
control-r - specify articles to read
s - save or pipe article [number of articles]
S - save or pipe all articles on page
control-s - specify articles to save
control-t - specify articles to save (alternate ctl-s)
p - print article [number of articles]
P - print all article on page
control-p - specify articles to print
w - update .newsrc status to cursor
W - update .newsrc status for whole newsgroup
control-w - update .newsrc status for all pages displayed
o - recover original .newsrc status for newsgroup
O - recover all original .newsrc status
# - display count of groups and pages - shown and total
% - list newsgroups with new article, updated counts
n - specify newsgroup to display and/or resubscribe to
u - unsubscribe from group
x - mark/unmark article [number of articles]
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* - mark/unmark article [number of articles]
X - erase marks on articles
h - toggle flag for display of headers when reading
z - toggle rotation for reading
<formfeed> - redraw screen
! - escape to UNIX to execute a command
? - show this help menu
When you read articles, there is another help menu, for
advancing through the articles, replying, posting followups,
and saving the articles. Breaks may be used to stop the
output of an article if you decide that you didn't really
want to read it. You can jump from the reading portion back
to either page you came from or the NEXT page.
For replying and posting followups, you will be thrown into
an editor to create the reply or article. The article will
be included in the file you are editing, marked with "> "'s
for excerpting in your reply or followup. After you exit
the editor, you are prompted to make sure you still want to
post or reply, so you can abort.
For the "mail reply" choice, you will be shown the address
taken from the article, and you may specify a different one.
This is done with the article you have been reading still on
the screen so that you may copy the authors suggested path,
if present.
The editor is determined by your EDITOR variable, as for
postnews. If EDITOR is not set, you get vi, or the default
determined at your site.
Reading menu:
n - next article, if any
q - quit reading articles, if any more to read
Q - quit reading, and turn to next page of articles
r - rewind article to beginning
<return> - next line
m - send mail to author of article
f - post followup to article
s - save article in a file
? - see this help menu
z - toggle rotation flag
h - toggle header suppression flag
anything else to continue normal reading
FILES
/usr/tmp/* One temporary file created by tmpnam
(3), and immediately unlinked,
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remains open in update mode for
duration of session. Disk space
freed by system close of file
descriptor at exit. Can be large,
as this file contains the "page"
displays. Temporary files also
created by tmpnam (3) for mailing
replies, posting followups and
creating digest "articles".
(login directory)/.newsrc
news status file. Updated following
session. See NEWSRC environment
variable.
(login directory)/*.vn One temporary file created by tmpnam
(3) while updating the .newsrc file.
If the update fails, you are
informed, and this file may be used
to recover the last update.
Unlinked following successful
update.
(spool directory)/* spooling directories containing
articles.
/usr/lib/news/active active newsgroup list.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
PS1 used to present prompt string for
command on unix escape. defaults to
"$ "
EDITOR editor used for mailing replies and
posting followups. defaults to
"ed".
POSTER posting program for followups.
defaults to "inews -h".
MAILER used when mailing replies. defaults
to "/bin/mail".
PRINTER program used with the print commands
for sending articles to the printer.
defaults to "lpr -p".
NEWSRC if set, can be used to override the
choice of ".newsrc" as the name for
the status file. Name will still be
used relative to the login direc-
tory.
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DIAGNOSTICS
user error messages. self explanatory.
AUTHOR
R. L. McQueer
BUGS
Note that readnews will rearrange the order of .newsrc. If
you interleave use of it with vn, order selection gets
hosed.
If you've really taken advantage of the ability of readnews
to skip articles in the middle of the spooling numbers, be
warned that vn doesn't have it, and will assume you've read
the articles in the middle.
If the .newsrc file indicates that you've read articles in a
newsgroup with a higher number than the current spooling
number for that newsgroup, vn will show you the entire news-
group. This is intended for recovery in cases where article
spooling has been reset, or to avoid missing articles
because you just changed machines and didn't bother to edit
your .newsrc file. Rather than miss stuff, you'll see some
old stuff again.
Sometimes a "break" during reading an article will not only
halt the article but suppress the prompt. A command charac-
ter will work anyway.
If a prompt to be displayed on the dialogue line contains
non-printing sequences, stuff on the line may not get erased
when you are prompted, because vn thinks the string is long
enough to overprint its current contents. This usually
comes up when you have escape sequences in your UNIX prompt,
and do a "!" command. The "overprint" check is made to save
a clear-line sequence (kludged in by overprinting to the end
with blanks if the terminal doesn't have one - annoying at
1200 baud).
Output during the reading phase which was suppressed by
backgrounding vn does not get started by foregrounding it
again without doing a control-z and a second foreground (it
doesn't figure out its background / foreground status on
each output - only on startup and while handling the SIGTSTP
signal). Actually, this results in a method for having vn
do its reading phase silently in the foreground without
redirecting output, should such a thing be desired.
Very many -w or -t options cause SLOW reading phases. It is
reccomended that these be used only when reading a few
specific groups.
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Digest extraction will split a single article into several
if it contains embedded ---- lines, the normal separator
between articles in digests. They will all have identical
titles. Digest extraction may not work with human built
digests which don't use the expected syntax for joining
articles. mod.computers.ibm-pc and mod.computers.mac were
used as models for the feature.
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