Tutorial 14: Group Reader
Move Up Move to Top Move to Top Contents: Main Group Window Areas
Main Group Window Areas The basic structure and operation of the group window is covered in an ealier tutorial: Tutorial 5: Newsreading Basics. This tutorial covers more advanced features of the Group Reader window.

At the top of the window are a set of register tabs which can be used to move between the several areas of the group window.


You can click on one of the tabs to go to the associated section of this tutorial.

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Status Bar & Abort Button

 In the main newsreading area near the top of the window is the status bar, which looks like this:

On the left side of the status bar is a brief message which indicates the current action. It lists states such as Idle, D/L'ing Articles (N of M), etc.

On the right side of the status bar is a bar graph showing the approximate percentage completion of the current action. Some actions such as downloading articles only update the status approximately every 100 lines.

On the far right of the status bar is a small stop button which can be pressed to halt the current network operation. For example, if you start downloading a very long article by mistake, pressing this will stop that operation. Pressing it during batch downloading of articles will halt that operation, and so on. This button will be ghosted if no operation is in progress or if the current operation is not abortable.

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Article Status Icon On the left side of the article list is a small status icon which displays the current state of the listed article. The exact look of the icons will depend on your current MUI preferences:

The broken icon is displayed for articles that could not be fetched from the server. This might be due to any number of causes: the article has expired, it has been cancelled, a connection could not be made to the news server, or an error occurred when attempting to fetch the article from the server.
The network icon is displayed for articles are in the queue to be downloaded from the network, or are actually being transferred from the network.
The cached icon is displayed for articles that have been cached on the local disk. Since no information needs to be obtained from the news server, these articles may be read in offline mode. Articles may be explicitly cached by using one of the cache menu items.
The permanent icon is displayed for articles that have been marked as permanent. Permanent articles are like cached articles, but they do not expire as normal articles do, and will remain in the group until explicitly deleted or marked as non-permanent.

By clicking in the column that displays the status icon, you can cycle an individual article between Normal, Cached, and Permanent.

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Group Window Toolbars The article list toolbar looks like this:


You can click on the buttons to move to the associated section of this tutorial. The article viewer toolbar looks like this:


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Mode Changing Arrows

 These buttons move the article list between All Articles, All Threads, and One Thread modes.

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Read/ Unread Toggle

 These buttons determine whether read article, unread articles, or both, are displayed in the article list. If neither button or both buttons are pushed (depressed), then all articles are displayed. If the only read button () is pushed, then only read articles are displayed. If only the unread button () is pushed, then only unread articles are displayed.

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One Author Button

 If this button is depressed, then the article list is restricted to viewing articles by one particular author. When this button is pushed, the author of the currently article highlighted in the article list is remembered, and only articles by this author are displayed.

Note that this is orthogonal to any other restrictions in place. For example, if you are in One Thread mode, only articles by the chosen author in that particular thread are displayed. To display all articles in the current group by a particular author, first move to All Articles mode and then use the button.

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Kill Button

 This button provide an easy way to create kill files. A small popup window that looks like this will appear:


The first cycle gadget choses the kill type. The choices are:

  • Kill Selected Articles - This will kill all selected articles.

  • Kill Selected Threads - This will kill all articles in the same thread(s) as the selected article(s).

  • Kill All by Same Author - This will kill all articles written by the same author as the selected article(s).

The second cycle gadget selects between:

  • Kill Current Articles - Only articles present now will be killed. This will have no effect on any future articles posted to this group.

  • Kill Current & Future Articles - This will also kill new articles that come along matching the same criteria. For example, if Kill Selected Threads is chosen, then the next time this group is read, new articles posted to the selected threads will be killed as well. This will effectively remove all articles that have been posted as well as all articles that will be posted to those threads. The function in Kill All by Same Author mode is similar: any future articles posted by the selected authors will be killed as well.

The Expiration control is only available if Kill Current & Future Articles has been selected. If the checkbox is unset, then the kill filter entry that has been created will never expire. If it is checked, however, then the kill filter entry will expire after the indicated period of disuse. For example, if you chose to kill all articles in a particular thread now and in the future, then the kill filter entry that accomplishes this will disappear after nothing has been posted to that thread for the indicated period of time. This makes it easier to manage kill filters.

The results of using this easy front end to kill filters can be changed or examined by hand as well. A group specific kill filter of the type HeaderMatch called is created called Thread/Author Kill. This filter can be found in the Select Filters tab of the group window. You might want to add, remove, or change various entries by hand.

Lastly, pressing the Kill button will kill the indicated articles and if required, add to the Thread/Author Kill filter. Pressing the Cancel button will close the window and not do anything else.

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View Button

 The article list view button allows you to change the currently enabled set of selection filters. In effect, you can define different Views onto the current group, and select one or more of them at any given time. Pressing this button yields a small popup window like this:


This window lists both selection filters defined for this group only, and global selection filters defined in the configuration area. Any combination of filters can be toggled on or off here, and when the Update button is pressed, the popup window will close and the article list will update to display articles matched by the newly enabled set of selection filters.

By default, the selection filters are used in Any mode. That is, an article matches will be displayed if it matches any enabled filters. But this can be changed in the main selection filter list to All mode, in which only articles that match all enabled filters are displayed.

The Close button will close the popup window but will not immediately update the article list.

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Action Button

 This will pop up a list of defined action filters:


Any combination of action filters may be selected, and when the Run button is pressed, the action filters will be run against the currently selected set of articles. If necessary, articles may be fetched from the network at this time.

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Article Viewer Movement

 These buttons move the view to the top or bottom of the currently displayed article.

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Post New & Followup

 The PostNew button () posts a new article to this group. The Post Followup button () posts a followup to the article in the article view area, or a new article if no article is currently displayed.

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Article Viewer Browsing

 Pressing the forward browse button () or the period/full-stop "." key will page forward in the article displayed in the article list. When the end of the article is reached, the next article in the present thread will be fetched and displayed. When the end of the thread is reached, the first article in the next thread will be displayed, and so on until the end of the group. Many times, it is possible to browse news using just by pressing the period/full-stop key when you are ready to continue reading.

The reverse browse button () which is mapped to the "," key performs the same function but in reverse. It pages back in the present article, etc.

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Article Text Searching

 This button is similar to the list search buttons available elsewhere, but instead it searches for the indicated text through the article body of the article displayed in the article view area.

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Article Text Clipping

 This button is similar to the clip buttons available elsewhere, but instead it copies the currently selected text from the article viewer into the system clipboard.

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Group Specific Filters The group specific filter areas allow you to define a set of filters that apply only to this particular group. Filters that apply to more than one group may be defined in the configuration area.

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Group Config There are three main areas in the group specific configuration options:


  • Group Description - This string is displayable in the Group List window, and can be read from the server by group lists's Read Description command, although it may be manually set to any string here.

  • Server - If non-blank, the indicated server will be used to fetch this group instead of using the project's default server. For example, you might want to read a special programming group available from a different news server than you typically read news from.

  • Signature File - If non-blank, this will override the default signature file from the configuration area.

  • ArticleView Title - If non-blank, this will override the default set in the configuration area.

  • Max Articles - Upon exiting the group, older articles are expired until at most this many remain. Also, no more articles than this will be fetched from the news server at once.


  • Cached Articles - If articles have been cached (which is most often done to support later off-line reading), NewsRog will typically ask whether to keep or delete them when the group is closed. This option may be set to Keep at Exit, Ask at Exit, or Delete at Exit to specify a behavior.

  • Mem Cache Articles - When reading news, the last few articles read will be cached in memory to make them quickly available if you go back and re-read an article. This is the maximum number of articles that will be so cached in memory.

  • Mem Cache Size - This is the maximum size of the article memory cache.

  • Thread Prefetch - When reading one article of a thread in online mode, the next few articles in the same thread will be fetched while you are still reading the first to speed access for sequential reading. This is the number of pre-fetched articles. Note that the articles must fit in the memory cache, so the smaller of this value and Mem Cache Articles actually determines the prefetch.


  • D/L New on Startup - If set, then new article headers will be downloaded from the news server when the group window is opened and NewsRog is in online mode. Otherwise, headers are only fetched manually using the Group/Fetch New menu.

  • Use Full Headers - When fetching articles, NewsRog usually downloads only a subset of the available headers. This subset is sufficient for almost all purpose, but leaves out some infrequently used headers such as the Path headers. Setting this option will cause NewsRog to download all the article's headers instead, which is slightly slower and consumes more room in the header cache.

  • Mark Read on Exit - If set, all articles in the group are automatically marked as read when the group window is closed.

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Group Window Menus Group Project menu:

  • Save - Saves the headers to the local disk cache. This includes information such as read/unread articles.

  • Close - Save & close the current group.

  • Close/NoSave - Close the group window without saving the header cache. This is not generally the recommended way to close the group window.

Group menu:

  • Fetch New - Checks for and downloads new article headers in this group. Normally in online mode this happens automatically when the group is opened, but new headers can be fetched at any time.

  • Clean Cache - Rebuilds the group's cache information from the cache directory. Normally this is not required; if for example the computer is rebooted without properly shutting down the program, this will be detected the next time a group is opened and the cache will be cleaned automatically.

  • Post New - Compose a new post to this group. The new post will not be a followup to any particular article, but will start a new thread.

  • Expire Articles - Force an expire of old articles. In online mode, all articles older than the oldest available from the server for this group are expired (except for permanent articles, which are never expired). In offline mode, this information is not available, so only articles over the defined group maximum are expired.

Article List menu:

  • Select All - Select (highlight) all articles currently shown in the article list.

  • Toggle Selected - Toggle the selected state of all article currently shown in the article list.

  • Search... - The same as pressing the search button ( ).

The following sub-menus are available under Article List/Selected Articles menu, Article List/All in Thread, and Article List/All in Group. Their function is identical, differing only in the set of articles operated upon:

  • Set Read - Mark the articles or threads as read.

  • Set Unread - Mark the articles or threads as unread.

  • Mark - Set a user mark on the selected articles. Articles marked in this way show up as bold. This can be used to mark interested articles or threads.

  • Unmark - Reset the user mark set with Mark.

  • Cache - Cache the selected articles on the local disk.

  • Cache Permanent - Make the selected articles permanent. Permanent articles are cached on the local disk but do not expire.

  • Uncache - Remove cached or permanent articles from the local disk cache.

The Viewer Article menu commands operate on the article displayed in the article viewer:

  • Select All Text - All article text is selected.

  • Save Text... - The article text is saved to the selected file.

  • Search... - Identical to pressing the button.

  • Post Followup... - Composes a followup to this article, including and quoting the original article text.

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Summary By this point in the tutorial you should understand:

  • How to move between the main group window areas.
  • How the status bar operates.
  • How to cancel pending network operations.
  • What the different article status icons mean.
  • What the article list toolbar looks like.
  • How to change the article list mode.
  • How to view read articles, unread articles, or both.
  • How to view articles by a particular author.
  • How to create basic kill filters for authors or threads.
  • How to change the enabled set of selection filters.
  • How to run user defined actions against articles.
  • What the article viewer toolbar looks like.
  • How to move to the top or bottom of the displayed article.
  • How to browse forward and backward.
  • How to search for text in an article body.
  • How to copy text from an article body to the clipboard.
  • How to change the enabled set of display filters.
  • What the group specific configuration options do.
  • What the group window menus do.
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